February 20: Bhutan News Service (BNS) in close coordination with the Camp Management Committee (CMC) in Beldangi-I camp distributed relief package to fire victims in the camp on Friday amidst a special function. 
BNS distributed cash donation to fire victims in presence of representatives from the UNHCR, LWF and Armed Police Force. The donation package ranged from Nepalese rupees 1300 to 7000 based on family sizes.
Through online ‘call for support’, BNS had collected Nepalese rupees 156339.33 from resettled Bhutanese in various parts of the world. Similarly, Bhutanese from Adelaide, Albury, Wodonga and Melbourne of Australia shared their souls by extending monetary cash to the fire victims.
Association of Bhutanese in Norway alone had contributed the greatest amount followed by resettled Bhutanese in Australia. Bhutanese Community of Australia had played crucial role in donation.
On the program, the CMC also distributed Nepalese rupees 32000 cash collected from various camps while the Netherlands-based GHRD and Bhutanese community in the Netherlands also distributed Nepalese rupees 28844 to the fire victims, through representatives of BNS and CMC.
Vidhyapati Mishra of BNS, who reached camp from Kathmandu to distribute the cash support, also handed over ‘match box’ and ‘lighter’ as symbols of fire control to camp secretary TB Gurung during the program.
Fire victims highly praised those who managed their hard times to collect the funds. “We are really thankful to Parshuram Luitel in Australia, Ramesh Gautam in Norway, the BNS team, and the entire Bhutanese community in diaspora for extending us support,” said TB Gurung during the program.
Click here for details of the support through BNS. Click here to download powepoint for photograghs and other details.
By Arjun Pradhan/BNS
