Rajbiraj, March 21, 2006

He had determined to free himself from the clutches of illiteracy but little could he know that poverty would force him quit school one year after joining the first grade at the age of 59. Kailu Sada of Pansera VDC-5 had enroled in the first grade of the Janata Lower Secondary School at Khurhuriya last year but now he is thinking of returning to full time work due to lack of money. Sada, father of three sons and grandfather of thirteen grandchildren, is currently preparing for final examination of the first grade. He worked in the mornings and evenings to earn money while he regularly attended the school in the day time. “I wanted to study more but I can’t and I will give all my books to my grandchildren,” he said. He didn’t have to pay money in the school but he said he would have to work to make ends meet. His grandson, Bacha Lal studying in the fifth grade helps Kailu in his studies. He said, “Learning was easy and fun, my grandchildren also taught me well but I will have to leave studies to work.” His teacher Jagannath Chaudhari also said Sada was one of the brightest students in class despite his age. His neighbours said Kailu’s wife is already dead and his daughters-in-law don’t give him anything to eat unless he works and this is hindering his studies. Teachers of the school said his grandchildren also come to school regularly after Kailu joined the school.

Nepal first in South Asia to use CAC facility

Kathmandu, March 21, 2006

C­arrier Access Code (CAC) facility, which has been implemented for the customers in Kathmandu valley since yesterday is expected to deal with the problem of ISD congestion and also enhance quality of service of the two telecom service providers of the country. For long both Nepal Telecom (NT) and United Telecom Ltd (UTL) were using their own gateways to transfer the ISD calls, however, with the introduction of CAC, customers irrespective of subscription, can now chose either NT’s gateway or UTL’s gateway, while making an international call. The CAC code for UTL is 1212 and for NT is 1444. If NT’s customer is willing to use the gateway facility of UTL, the customer has to dial 1212 in place of ‘00’ followed by the country code, area code and subscriber number and the call will pass through UTL’s gateway. Similarly UTL customer can use the NT’s gateway by dialing 1444 in place of ‘00’ and the call will pass through NT’s gateways. While using the gateways customers would need to pay the charges specified by the respective service provider. This is certainly a good news for the telephone users as with competition, quality and customer care will improve, congestion will be eliminated and tariffs are bound to fall further, states a press release issued here today by the UTL.