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By P.R. Pradhan

The general public is suffering from multiple crises caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Many of the youths have lost their job, many of them have come down to the streets due to the loss of their job and roaming around streets with an empty stomach.

Many businessmen, especially those involved in tourism, restaurant, event management, party palace, cinema hall, theatre, movie producing, public transportation, etc. have become the direct victim of the Covid-19 pandemic. Moreover, all the sectors have been directly or indirectly affected by the pandemic. Even people are being died due to hunger and many have committed suicide due to the depression mainly caused by unmanageable bank loan burden.

This is the time for the government to overcome the pandemic and re-energize the country’s economy seriously hit by the pandemic. For this, the government should study the affected areas and compensate the victims of Covid-19. The government is trying to escape from its responsibility saying that it has no such fund to pay compensation to the affected people. Why not the government ready take the foreign loan, why not the government cut down its expenses, why not the government is ready to announce 50 per cent cut down on salaries and facilities provided to the political people in the federal, provincial and local governments, why not the government scrap the practice of nominating dozens of advisors by the PM, ministers and others misusing the government fund, why not the government cut down salaries of those high ranking officials at least for one year? We don’t know, what the government is doing! We just know that the two supreme leaders of the ruling Nepal Communist Party — PM and chairman KP Oli and the other chairman Pushpakamal Dahal Prachanda — are holding a daily hour-long meeting to include their own men in new appointments and in the cabinet reshuffle.

The government has been totally failed to tackle the pandemic. Since the coronavirus pandemic was spread in Wuhan, China in December 2019, the Nepal government had enough time to do proper homework to cope with the pandemic. Unfortunately, the government authorities, instead of responding to the warning of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and other experts, took the pandemic very lightly. Even today, even after the infected cases crossed one hundred thousand along with active cases above 25 thousands and death of nearly one thousand people from the Covid-19, the government, as well as, the opposition parties have not paid attention to the worst situation created by the pandemic.

Those countries which took the pandemic seriously, have already been able to overcome it, sadly, our authorities were engaged in the ill-intention of making the pandemic as the source of commission income while procuring the life-saving medicines and equipment. We saw the government authorities dealing with controversial medical suppliers in procuring medicines and health equipment by paying many times more than the market price.

The ruling party is claiming that it has the strength of around eight hundred thousand active party members. Why the ruling party didn’t mobilize the active party members to control the movement of the people, which is important in curbing the spread of the pandemic! The political system has developed such a huge structure of representation of the salary receiving political leaders. When they are receiving a monthly salary from the state coffer, why the government was unable to use them to control the pandemic? Even in ward committees, there are four ward members and one ward chairman. They receive a monthly salary. If the ward members were mobilized in every ward, they could properly monitor the movement of people and also could keep a record of those new people arrived from other parts. They could monitor whether the newly arrived people were quarantined or not. In this regard, the federal government totally failed to mobilize the provincial government and also local government and thus the country is facing a heavy price of the pandemic. In fact, authorities in the three governments were concerned about how can they make money through corruption or commission. They might have felt that they could earn more money if the pandemic would spread in society!

In this regard, there is a strong connection between corruption and commission with the Covid-19 pandemic, particularly in Nepal.

In conclusion, the federal government has failed to do proper homework in the fight against the Covid-19 leading the country towards a crisis and the economy heading towards bankruptcy. Accordingly, the provincial governments were unable to show their significance, all three-level government are heavily involved in corruption and commission and finally, the political leaders have been failed to demonstrate their visionary leadership.

It is odd to note that even after such anomalies in all sectors, the general public has remained silent, which is a serious crime!

People’s News Print Edition