Chief District Officer of Jhapa, Yadav Prasad Koirala, Monday asked all the agitation Bhutanese to end up their ongoing relay hunger strike.
Koirala requested a joint team of camp secretaries and the struggle committee that has been demanding registration and refugee status of all pending cases.
The delegation that reached Chandragadi, Jhapa this morning also submitted a 10-point demand paper to the CDO. Their demands included registration of non-registered Bhutanese, settling all pending cases for refugee status, issuance of photo identity cards to those whose registration was over, and facilitate local women married to Bhutanese for an aid basket, among others. With a 15 day ultimatum, the struggling committee and camp secretaries decided to withdraw their all protest programs.
CDO Koirala assured to resume the installed verification process. “I have notified the government regarding your concerns,” he told the delegation, “We are trying to verify the pending cases immediately.”
Meanwhile, the Country Representative of the United Nations High commissioner for Refugees, made it clear that UNHCR has formally asked the government of Nepal to resume the office of Joint Verification Team (JVT) as early as possible.
He said so in an exclusive interview with Saranarthi Sarokar, weekly radio magazine from Nepal FM, Kathmandu yesterday.
“It is not good to keep these people unregistered,” Stephane Jaquemet said, “We are equally concerned regarding their demands.”
He told that the UNHCR had sent a formal proposal to the government. “We were responded to make some amendments in our proposal, which we did,” he explained.
He also said that it was not good to keep unregistered people for another month.” The process must start in few weeks,” he added.
According to UNHCR, it is ridiculous to assume the non-registered cases as high as 40,000. The highest figure in our record is 3,000, Jaquemet elaborated.
“Until we register Nepali, we can never achieve such a large figure.”
Bhutan News Service and Radio Bhutan Online will publish an interview Jaquemet the coming week. BNS: Inputs from Jhapa by Arjun Pradhan in Chandragadi.Please comment us at editor [at] bhutannewsservice.com
