By IANS,
Kathmandu : As the toll in diarrhoea and cholera epidemics in western Nepal crossed 200 with thousands being affected in Dalit villages, Nepal’s Health Minister Umakant Chaudhari left for Germany on a five-day junket, triggering sharp criticism among lawmakers.
The Maoists, the biggest party in parliament, Sunday called for the resignation of the minister, who belongs to former prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala’s Nepali Congress party.
“It is shameful,” said Narayan Kaji Shrestha ‘Prakash’, the deputy leader of the parliamentary party of the former rebels.
Shrestha told the chairman of the house, Subhash Nembang, that at a time when over 200 people have died in the epidemic that has been raging on for nearly two months, the health minister’s absence from the country to go on a foreign tour proved his irresponsibility.
“We demand the resignation of the health minister,” the Maoist leader said. “Or the government should sack him”.
Chaudhari left Saturday on a five-day trip to attend a seminar on health in Germany.
His absence was criticised by members of parliament Saturday as well.
However, his main critics, the Maoists, had faced similar criticism during their own brief stint in power as well.
Maoist chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda ignored a devastating flood last year to fly to Beijing to attend the concluding ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games within a week of assuming office.
This year, before the fall of his eight-month-old government, he went on a junket again to Scandinavian countries, ostensibly to study harnessing wind power for generating energy, at a time Nepal was reeling under a 20-hour power outage daily.
The prime minister’s visit, however, did not result in any steps to harness the wind in Nepal’s mountains to generate power.
Diarrhoea, a recurrent event in Nepal every monsoon, has been raging in western districts Jajarkot, Rukum, Surkhet, Dadeldhura, Doti, Accham, Salyan and Kanchanpur.
Cholera strains were also found in Jajarkot, where alone the epidemic has killed over 150 people.
Over 10,000 people are feared affected with the majority being Dalits, the poorest community in Nepal and still regarded as untouchables despite laws against untouchability.
The absence of toilets in villages lead to defecation in open fields, which causes the contamination of drinking water sources and the spread of the disease.
Even in Kathmandu, the capital, nearly 50,000 houses are estimated to be without toilets.