As Bec and I pack our things for another visit to Nepal we have been reading some news articles that have left us feeling somewhat ambivalent about the situation there. The maoist-led government have been in power now for around 8 months and last week saw the launch of their very ambitious campaign to provide basic literacy skills to the 8 million adults in Nepal who currently are unable to read or write. It is a huge undertaking and involves thousands of volunteers working as teachers. The project has not been without hiccups as there has still been the problem of getting the necessary text books to the more remote regions of the country. This is a problem that occurs every year with school text books as schools outside the major urban areas often have to wait half the year to receive the curriculum and books for that year!
To the government's credit measures were put in place to avoid such a delay with providing the literacy text books but recent severe power shortages have foiled their plans. For the past couple of weeks most people across Nepal had to endure 16 hours without power each day, even in built up city areas. Power was only available between 10pm and 4am each day. As you can imagine, this makes doing business and most aspects of daily life nearly impossible. For a country with access to the world's largest natural water source, it is very disappointing that more has not been done to harness this resource for 'clean' electricity. Unfortunately with the problem now so severe there is talk that Nepal will start importing even more diesel-powered generators which sounds like a good idea to solve the problem except that the country typically has trouble maintaining a sufficient supply of diesel and other fuel to operate such generators as well as for motor transport. This means we are soon likely to see more access to electricity each day but little or no access to fuel, meaning long queues at fuel stations, and more difficulty for those who rely on transport for their livelihoods.
There is a real sense at the moment that the government are simply juggling problems to appease different groups for a short period at a time. We were heartened to hear yesterday that power cuts have now been reduced to only 10 hours per day due to an increase in snow melt from the Himalayas flowing into the rivers that service the hydro-electric power stations. But this will not stop the increasing dependence on fossil fuels for industry to be able to move forward. It is clear the challenges facing the new government are immense and we remain hopeful that they can start to deliver solutions before the country turns once again to violence and instability.
The BBC regularly reports on news from Nepal and you can find these stories by
clicking here. In particular, you can read the story about the power situation by
clicking here. Also, for an interesting look at the views of some Nepalese people from all walks of life
click here.
Bec and I will just be in Kathmandu for 10 days and during that time we will be checking up on all of the Foundation's projects as well as having some meetings to plan the launch of more exciting new projects this year. So stay tuned for more on these in the coming weeks.
Still, we have managed to make some good progress with new projects for 2009. The first of these involved Rebecca presenting at a forum on the future of the pashmina industry in Nepal. We have been working with Nepal Pashmina Industry Association (NPIA) for some time helping them with trade mark registrations and general branding advice. (Read more about this at our website.) We wanted to take this further as pashmina is one of the industries with the best potential for Nepal. The forum brought together industry specialists including scientists from the Nepal Agricultural Research Centre (NARC) and collectively we have started working towards a strategy to improve the processing infrastructure for the industry. This will include a large education component for women in the key areas where pashmina goats are farmed. These areas are typically high up in the Himalayas and quite poor, with little education and basically a subsistence lifestyle. The research carried out so far suggests that with a small amount of targeted input we will be able to make some big inroads into providing education and training opportunities for the women and girls in these areas. Stay tuned for more as this project takes shapes during the year.
The electricity situation has made blog updates very difficult but we have been ‘on the go’ for the entire week and we will post the updates as and when we can!
