|
Pangs
of Freedom
by
Bhagirath Yogi
Two
months after being declared `free,’ kamaiya families are yet to adjust
to the new realities. And, the government has done little to support them
in their need of hour
Raj
Kumar Dangaura Tharu, 24, and his family in Kailali district in
far-western Nepal could not believe to what they had heard. They had
rushed to district headquarters in mid-July as soon as they heard that the
government had declared all the kamaiya (bonded laborers) free. Raj Kumar
was even astonished to know that he would not have to pay nearly 20,000
rupees as ‘saunki’ (debt) that he inherited from his grandfather. But
he did not know what to do next. Within a couple of days, his `kisan’
(landlord) approached him and ordered him to vacate his mud-thatched hut.
“Vacate this hut immediately, otherwise police will put me behind bars,”
said his master. He even abused the government for waiving ‘saunki’
that his ‘kamaiya’ owed to him. He forced Raj Kumar to pay a couple of
hundred rupees that he had with him at the moment.
Accompanied
by his family, Raj Kumar then left for district headquarters, Dhangadhi.
There, he found hundreds of newly freed kamaiyas like him looking for food
and shelter. With the help of local non-government organizations like
BASE, CCS, Nepal Red Cross and some government agencies, make-shift camps
were erected in the district headquarters overnight. In the middle of the
monsoon, it was a difficult thing to do. Most of the former Kamaiya
families did not have utensils to cook food, enough clothes to put on and
even a charpoy to accommodate their family members. There were no toilet
and sanitation facilities.
This
resulted into outbreak of diseases like encephalitis and diarrhea. A team
of health workers put together by BASE checked most of them and provided
them with some medicines. Some of them were even referred to district
hospitals. According to organizations coordinating the relief works,
several kamaiya families living in these camps suffered from these
diseases including encephalitis.
There
had been mismatch on part of the government right from the beginning.
Though it declared nearly 16,000 kamaiya families, concentrated in five
western districts of the country, free on July 17 this year amidst intense
pressure from the opposition parties and activists, it was not prepared
for the future action. “In fact, we seem to have made the decision in
hurry,” admits Siddha Raj Ojha, Minister for Land Reforms and
Management. “In any case, the government is committed to provide relief
to the newly freed kamaiyas and rehabilitate them as soon as possible with
the help of the local non-governmental and international agencies.”
The
government set up a high-level coordination committee under the
convenorship of Deputy Prime Minister Ram Chandra Poudel comprising
concerned ministers and senior bureaucrats. Five committees have been set
up in Dang, Banke, Bardia, Kailali and Kanchanpur districts under the
convenorship of the chairman of the concerned district development
committee (DDCs), the popularly elected local bodies.
“We
have allocated Rs 200,000 ( approx. US$ 3000) each to all five districts
to carry out initial relief works,” said Krishna Raj Adhikari, spokesman
at the Ministry of Land Reforms and Management (MLRM). “ We are also
planning to provide at least one `kattha’ of land (about the size of a
volleyball court) to each family of former kamaiya in which they could
construct their houses and grow vegetables.”
Aid
workers, however, warn that resettling marginal people into the marginal
land won’t help solve the problem. “By providing one or two `katthas’
of land to kamaiyas in reclaimed land will not help break the vicious
cycle of poverty in which the kamaiyas are living,” said Bharat Devkota
of Save the Children/US. “It should provide up to ten katthas of land,
not in the area prone to flood, as it has promised to landless squatters.”
A
number of aid agencies joined their hands to provide relief to the former
kamaiyas as soon as they were declared free. In fact, some of them were
already supporting the freedom of kamaiya movement launched by some NGOs
at the grassroots level. According to available information, Action Aid
Nepal has provided relief materials worth Rs 400,000. The SC/US has also
provided materials worth Rs 450,000. ADRA/Nepal has provided relief
materials worth US$ 10,000.00. to more than 1100 families. Nepal office of
Lutheran World Service (LWS) said kamaiyas were one of the target groups
of its programs in Kailali district. “We feel strong moral obligation to
mobilize assistance to the kamaiyas,” said Allen Armstrong of LWS. The
LWS has already made an appeal to its donors to provide 25,000 dollars to
be used in the relief works for kamaiyas. Nepal Red Cross Society (NRCS)
has provided relief materials worth Rs 120,000 to former kamaiyas in
Kanchanpur district. “As we have focused more on providing relief to the
victims of natural disaster we haven’t been able to do much for the
(former) kamaiyas,” said Tirtha Raj Onta, executive director of the NRCS.
“But we may even contribute to long-term rehabilitation works if we can
mobilize more resources.”
The
United Nations agencies are also coming into the fray to support newly
liberated kamaiyas. The International Labor Organization (ILO)’s
International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor (IPEC) has entered
into an agreement with the District Development Committee of Kailali and
Kanchanpur, which will be receiving 350,000 rupees each. The program has
provision for education facilities for school going children, coaching
classes and temporary child literacy classes for non-school going
children. The funds will also be used for providing mid-day meals for 300
displaced children in each district, officials said.
Though
belatedly, officials are waking up to the urgency to provide relief to the
kamaiyas. A high-level government committee, in its meeting in the third
week of September, has decided to launch an emergency food assistance
program for the former ‘kamaiyas’ (bonded laborers) in Kailali and
Kanchanpur districts and assign officials to distribute the relief
materials in a planned and transparent manner. The kamaiya identification
and rehabilitation central coordination and monitoring committee, headed
by Deputy Prime Minister Ram Chandra Poudel, also recommended the
government to include representatives of Nepal Red Cross Society, INGOs
and NGOs in the central and district level committees, immediately start
distributing identification cards to the homeless kamaiyas and establish a
regional office in Nepalgunj to coordinate the kamaiya skill development
and rehabilitation program in a planned manner.
Minister
for Land Reforms and Management, Siddha Raj Ojha, said the government had
set up Kamaiya Welfare Trusts (KWT), to be headed by President of the
respective District Development Committees, in Banke, Bardiya, Kailali,
Kanchanpur and Dang districts. The Trusts would be responsible for
channeling the funds provided for the rehabilitation of the kamaiyas. He
said the government has already introduced a bill in the Parliament to ban
the practice of kamaiya.
The
district land reforms office in Dang distributed two katthas of land each
to 40 former kamaiyas on September 4. The KWT in Dang district had bought
five bighas of land to be distributed to the former kamaiyas. “Now the
former kamaiyas should use this land to build their houses and other
productive and vocational usage,” said Bharat K. C., President of Dang
DDC.
Brought
up as agricultural laborers, former kamaiyas usually don’t have other
skills than to work in the fields. The government has been training them,
into different groups, with different vocational skills such as basket
weaving, wood carving etc. But most of them haven’t succeeded in
launching their own vocations.
Experts
say kamaiyas are closely associated with lands. They can use even a small
piece of land in the most judicious way. Once they have land, only then
can look for other alternative means of employment. “As soon as the
government provides them lands aid agencies can start long-term
rehabilitation measures,” said an aid worker.
Though
officials say they would like to work in close coordination with the aid
workers, agencies involved in providing relief to the former kamaiyas say
otherwise. “The government is not exhibiting the responsiveness, that it
was supposed to do, at least at the district level,” said Devkota.
A
total of 37 camps have been set up for in Kailai and Kanchanpur districts
for former kamaiyas. Out of nearly 2400 families evicted from their
previous huts and land in these two districts, nearly 1200 are living in
these camps. The rest are living with their relatives or friends.
According
to reports, roofing (plastic sheets) in these camps by the government and
largely by the NGOs. Underneath the roof is bare ground. Only a few
families have charpoy with them whereas majority of them has to sleep on
the wet ground. Their biological need as well as family environment remain
unfulfilled. “The relief work has been very ad-hoc in nature and those
camps, which are near the district headquarters, are receiving attention,”
said a team of aid workers that visited the sites recently. While some
camps have access to safe drinking water through hand pumps most of them
are using soiled water from the river.
The
food for work program launched by the local DDCs too impractical, reports
said. The project in Kanchanpur is focused around certain areas within the
town whereas in Kailali, 18 projects have been identified for this
purpose, local officials said. While the road construction sties in the
forest area were too far from the camps, the quality of such works was
also low.
There
is need for relief work in the camps until the government announces its
rehabilitation plan. The freed kamaiyas need to be organized continuously
and alliance of NGOs working locally needs to strengthen their relief
operation mechanism. There is a need to constantly update information of
freed kamaiyas who are in camps and with relatives and friends, the aid
workers said.
Spokesman
at the MLRM, K. R. Adhikari, said the government had asked its officials
to update the latest number of former kamaiyas. “We are also on the
final stage of distributing identification cards to them,” he said.
According to a 1995 study conducted by the Ministry, there were more than
83,000 members in nearly 15,000 kamaiya families in these five districts
(See: Box). Of them, nearly, 7000 families had neither house nor a piece
of land. “We will give top priority to such families,” said Adhikari.
NGOs involved in the freedom movement of kamaiyas, however, say the number
of former kamaiyas could be as high as 200,000.
The
government’s kamaiya registration program is full of flaws, said
critics. They don’t have enough time to sit with local village
development committee and ward members to confirm the identity of former
kamaiyas. They have not also made any attempt to use records or expertise
of local NGOs who have been working with kamaiyas. The result is that many
of the people being registered are reportedly not kamaiyas at all, and
many people who are kamaiyas are not getting registered. Reports said some
daily wage laborers and even political workers have reportedly registered
themselves as kamaiyas anticipating free land. Land Reforms Officer at
Kailali, Maheswor Niraula, admitted that up to 40 percent of the forms may
have been filled by non-kamaiyas.
“It
is feared that this will cause serious problems in the future if the lists
being made now are going to be the basis for rehabilitation,” said Tim
Whyte, a Danish volunteer, working with BASE.
Besides
identifying genuine kamaiyas from the fake ones, the government needs to
have a long-term program to rehabilitate kamaiyas on a permanent way. The
MLRM, in its proposal distributed to different aid agencies, urged the
interested donors to consider supporting one or other activities related
to rescue and rehabilitation of the former kamaiyas. Some of the key
activities identified by the government for rehabilitation (as middle term
action) include support for development of low cost housing, support for
education and health care of emancipated kamaiyas and their children,
implement development work where unskilled kamaiyas could be employed, and
micro credit schemes for kamaiyas, among others.
The
Ministry has calculated the cost estimates for rescue operation at 0.56
million (including temporary roofing, supplying of food grains, utensils,
medicines, primary schooling and day time meals for school going age
children. Similarly, the estimate for rehabilitation operations have been
estimated at US$ 10.25 million including costs involved for constructing
low-cost housing for 8700 families, support for education and health care,
skill development training and revolving fund for micro-credit schemes.
While the government is expected to finance up to Rs 205 million for the
rehabilitation program, the rest (that is nearly 676 million rupees, or
roughly 10 million US dollars) has been expected to be financed through
external support.
“The
donors would be interested to support the rescue and rehabilitation
program only if the government exhibited adequate commitment for the
rehabilitation of the kamaiyas,” said an office-bearer with an
international aid agency. Whether the government exhibits the same remains
to be seen.
District
Number of kamaiyas
Kailali
5557 families
Bardia
5037 ,,
Dang
1856 ,,
Kanchanpur
1642 ,,
Banke
1060 ,,
(Source,
MLRM, 1995)
(The
writer is a senior journalist closely monitoring the Kamaiya movement.He wrote
this article at the request of MS Nepal).
|
