Chitwan, September 2
Chitwan District Administration Office has imposed a prohibitory order in the district to minimise the risk of coronavirus infection and members of the public are barred from coming out of their houses except for emergency situations. The order is in effect until Friday.
Regardless of the order, people have been advised to maintain physical distance to protect themselves from the infection. However, long lines of people have been seen outside some agricultural cooperatives in the district in the past few days. The farmers gather outside the cooperatives every day waiting for their turn to receive fertilisers for their crops.
Nepal has been suffering from the fertiliser shortage for the past few months.
Rajan Dhakal, the chief of the Bharatpur-based Agriculture Knowledge Centre, says the cooperatives were instructed to maintain distance while distributing the fertilisers, but they failed to implement the instruction.
The cooperatives, however, have their own complaints. “We tried to avoid crowds as much as possible, but could not. There is nothing more important than one’s need. Hunger is more alarming than a disease,” Radha Krishna Acharya, the manager of Sarvodaya Multipurpose Cooperative says.
