This has reference to the news “Trader arrested for selling ‘plastic’ rice in capital” (THT, July 13, Page 1). Thanks to the social media people are now aware of the production and distribution of plastic rice and vegetables that can cause severe health issues.

With weak monitoring, lax laws and bribe-friendly public servants, Nepal is a good market for all these experimental unnatural, food and drinks including plastic rice, GM food and radiation-tainted milk through the courtesy of the unscrupulous traders.

The only way to stop toxic food from entering the country is through tough punishment. The government must tell the public what actually plastic rice is, does it exist or it is simply a hoax.

People are scared about purchasing rice after this news broke. What are the ways to distinguish between the real and plastic rice?

Tough punishment can also control human trafficking and wildlife poaching “On the rise” (THT, Editorial, July 13, Page 8). Since a 100,000 rupee fine and five to 15 years jail sentence have failed to deter wildlife killers, we should up the sentence.

We could consider physical punishment like whipping and removal of organs from the body of the culprits such as kidneys, livers, blood and skin to compensate for the wildlife hides, bile, bone, tusk, horns etc.

If Malaysia can ‘announce harsh punishment for Malaysian employers such as fines, imprisonment and whipping’ for hiring illegal workers without causing any physical harm, Nepal cannot treat the people traffickers and wildlife killers with kid-glove treatment, or give a dose of their medicine to the offenders and criminals to build a clean, honest, ethical and moral Nepal.

Feeding plastic rice and vegetables to those who import, manufacture and sell them, and forcing poachers to donate their body organs and parts should deter the criminals.

Manohar Shrestha, Kathmandu

TIA’s image

Recently Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) has come under immense criticism from ICAO, a global regulatory body of the civil aviation sector.

For the matter of fact, the TIA has been rated as one of the worst airports in the world and the worst in Asia. It has really not been able to enhance its image when it comes to maintaining air safety, customer services and sanitation inside the airport complex.

The government has done little to minimise air accident which is quite rare in other countries. Regulatory and monitoring mechanism regarding air safety is not up to the international standard. As far as security is concerned the immigration department seems to be ineffective though the government has deployed adequate number of staffers to look into the matter.

Recent smuggling of huge cache of gold crossing the high security check points indicate that officials  have nexus with the smugglers.

Time has now finally arrived for the government to make sure that it will do everything possible for airworthiness as per the standard of ICAO.

Pratik Shrestha, Buddhanagar