National
ICYMI: Here are our top stories from Friday, January 24
Here are some of the stories from The Kathmandu Post (January 24, 2020).Post Report
Here are some of the stories from The Kathmandu Post (January 24, 2020).
Divisions appear in the Janata Party over whether or not to join government
The Rastriya Janata Party Nepal, which had been backing the KP Sharma Oli government since February 2018, suddenly turned hostile to the governing Nepal Communist Party in March last year after a district court handed a life term to its lawmaker Resham Chaudhary.
The party withdrew its support to the government, saying the Nepal Communist Party (NCP) had failed to uphold a deal reached between the two parties to keep Chaudhary out of jail. Chaudhary was convicted of masterminding the August 2015 Kailali violence, in which nine people were killed.
Tourist arrivals slowed significantly in 2019, raising concerns for Visit Nepal 2020
Tourist arrivals to Nepal slowed in 2019 after three years of solid double-digit growth, raising concerns over the country’s ability to meet Visit Nepal 2020’s target of 2 million arrivals.
Foreign tourist arrivals grew by a marginal 2 percent to 1.19 million last year, according to statistics released by the Department of Immigration. Among them, 995,884 arrived by air and 201,307 through different land routes, according to the department.
This means there were only 24,119 more visitors than the preceding year, which puts the country a long way off from reaching the 2 million target for 2020. Nepal will have to achieve a growth rate of nearly 70 percent in order to reach that figure.
For most transgender women, sex work remains the only way to make a living
Pretty was 15 years old when she first stood out on the streets of Chitwan looking for a customer. Bullied and teased by her teachers and classmates for her identity as a transwoman, Pretty had dropped out of school in the tenth grade to become a sex worker, earning as much as Rs15,000 to Rs20,000 a day.
“I knew that I was a female trapped in the body of a man at an early age,” 27-year-old Pretty told the Post. “But I was made to feel like I was abnormal. School made things worse, as I was often humiliated and referred to as chhakka.”
It was only when she met others like her that she was introduced to the LGBTIQ community. But at the same time, she was also introduced to the world of prostitution.
Pressure mounts on Sher Bahadur Deuba as rival faction ups the ante
Pressure is mounting on Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba. With the party and its sister organisations fraught with internal wranglings, rival camps in the Congress are putting the heat on Deuba to settle the disputes—chief among them, deciding the date for the party’s 14th general convention.
After several rounds of talks between two rival groups, led by Deuba and senior leader Ram Chandra Poudel, on Thursday failed to yield any results on the issue of general convention, the Poudel faction held a separate meeting at the residence of party General Secretary Shashank Koirala.
Mental health patients deprived of treatment in Sudurpaschim
Premram Tiruwa’s two sons suffer from undiagnosed mental illnesses. Twenty-six-year-old Pradip and his 22-year-old brother Ramesh live with their father, Premram, at Dasharathchand Municipality in Baitadi.
“Both my sons have been suffering from some kind of mental disease,” said Premram. “But we haven’t been able to identify the disease.”
Both Pradip and Ramesh developed their symptoms almost a decade ago, but haven’t received a proper diagnosis for lack of a proper medical facility in the district.
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