THT 10 years ago: Where aged women live happily

Kathmandu, March 2, 2007

An old-age home in Rabi Bhavan has been serving the elderly women, who have no one to fend for themselves. Dil Shova Shrestha has been running the Old Age Management Social Work Trust on her own. She brings ageing women, who are abandoned on the streets, here.

She does not seek recommendations, donations and official documents from these women before providing them with shelter at the trust. The sole owner and caretaker of the trust, Shrestha says women, who are left to fend for themselves, are more miserable than men.

The trust provides shelter and services to ageing, destitute and poverty-stricken women. Sitting on her bed at the trust, septuagenarian Buddha Kumari Acharya is overjoyed to chat with other elderly women staying at the trust.

Acharya has been staying at the trust for seven months. “No worries for us anymore. We are given much respect and care here,” says Buddha Kumari, who is always decked up in red. “I got married when I was seven. My husband ran away from home a year later.”

Though nobody knows about the whereabouts of her husband, she is always dressed in red because she believes he is still alive. “After living for 10 years with my in-laws, I went to my parents in Nuwakot,” she says, that the idea of getting married again never occurred to her.

Students urge early solution to Pokhara University problems

The Pokhara University (PU) Free Students Union Central Ad-hoc Committee today requested the ninemember committee, formed by the government to investigate the PU’s activities, to hold discussion on the students’ demands and submit a report at the earliest.

“Delay in solving the problems ailing the university will further delay the examinations, so we request the principals, teachers and deans to take the matter seriously and work towards solving the problem,” stated a press release issued here today.

On February 22, the Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES) had formed a nine-member committee under the co-ordination of Prof Dr Uttam Narayan Shrestha of PU to investigate the activities in the university and submit a report.

The FSU has been staging a PU lockout since the past 20 days affecting works in all the 23 affiliate colleges. The students have forwarded a 17-point charter of demands including quashing of the semester barrier, provision of unlimited credit limit and proper alternative management for failing students, among others.

The students have said that the university management is not interested in looking into their demands.

“Students are interested to solve the problem but no one else in the university is interested to hold talks to solve them,” said Santosh Bhusal, advisor of the FSU.