Only when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared
COVID-19 a pandemic on 11 March did the government of Nepal and Kathmandu’s
intelligentsia come to understand how serious the situation was. The government
then declared a lockdown of the country starting on 24th March as its best
option to contain the coronavirus outbreak.
Photo: Empty street of Kathmandu during Lockdown; Photo by The Kathmandu Post
It took a few days to come to
terms with what it meant to be living in lockdown, which for many felt like
self-imprisonment. Some people went out on the streets to find out what
lockdown looked like from the outside. Many more had to venture out to obtain
the necessities of living. Police would interrogate them and make them stand on
the spot for two hours for violating lockdown, but for the majority of the poor
who lived in crowded shantytowns or cramped rented rooms, staying inside at all
times was simply impossible. Within a few weeks, people started to panic.
As the government announced to provide relief package to the
daily bread earners through the local levels, people flocked to the ward
offices. The offices were overcrowded after the people lined up in order to
fill the forms to claim relief packages. The people did not care about the
government's appeal to maintain the social distancing while queuing up at the
ward office. It seemed that people cared more about their hungry stomach rather
than the virus
Photo by: New Republica
Migrant laborers in Kathmandu
found themselves without jobs and without time to plan for their next move when
the lockdown was suddenly announced. They were not yet aware of what exactly
the coronavirus was, nor how they could protect themselves from it; they only
knew that it was dangerous. Yet perhaps even more so than the then invisible
and unknown virus, they were scared of the prospects of arranging food, gas to
cook with, and finding money for rent. The government had given no indication
as to when the lockdown would finally be lifted. As the days passed with
continuous extensions, anxieties mounted exponentially. People started to pack
their things and walk back to their villages. The journeys were arduous; some
people made more than a 500 kilometer-walk, from Kathmandu to Jhapa, or from
Solokhumbu to Kailali district. The exodus was reminiscent of scenes of
refugees fleeing from war zones, with women and children on the roads without
food, water, or a place to spend the night.
Wage workers from Bardiya, Kailali and Kanchanpur returning
home by foot from Kathmandu after the government imposed lockdown (Photo:
Hemanta Shrestha)
There are an estimated two
million Nepalese in India, most working as low wage laborers in occupations
ranging from security guards to cooks, waiters, porters, and laborers. After
Prime Minister Narendra Modi imposed a complete lockdown in India for three
weeks beginning March 24 (Banaji, 2020), Nepali workers were left without jobs
and without a way to return home. Thousands began to walk. When the Indian
government eased the lockdown, they rushed aboard buses, trucks, and vans to
return to their villages in Nepal (Hashim, 2020). Local officials in
border-towns estimated arrivals of around 2,000 each day. Unfortunately, they
were denied entry to Nepal, as the government had closed the border in March.
They gathered along border points in the south and the towns across the fierce
Himalayan river Mahakali - the natural border between the two countries in the
west - and remained there, stranded (Badu, 2020). The anxiety of not being able
to reach family and fear of coronavirus death led some to swim across the
river, only to get arrested by Nepali police.
When the government decided
to let the migrants re-enter the country in mid-April, they were required to
stay in quarantine for 14 days. The Health Ministry in Nepal asked local
government bodies to set up places for quarantine - this was an important step
in containing the virus before it could spread. Local governments erected
quarantine tents in the border villages. As the schools were closed for an
indefinite period due to COVID-19, the government later decided to open up
space for quarantine in school buildings, and soon all of these newly set up
quarantine centers were crowded with people. There were no toilets or bathrooms
to properly attend to hygiene, nor did the quarantined have access to proper
food and drink. Testing took a long time, sometimes as long as a month, before
results from the swab samples were available. With the summer heat, people began
to get sick, and those who had already been infected with coronavirus
transmitted it to others. The quarantine centers ended up becoming centers for
COVID-19 transmission.
Ill-managed quarantine turning into covid breeding centers. Photo by The Kathmandu Post
As Nepal continued its battle with the coronavirus pandemic
a new kind of invasion threatened to destroy vital crops and
vegetation. Locust insect coming from India, damaged crops and vegetation
in Nepal resulting expected food shortage in soon future.
Photo by CNN
While the
country is reeling under the implications of the coronavirus pandemic, the
onset of the monsoon season has worsened the situation in Nepal.
According to
the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority, Nepal has
witnessed a total of 256 monsoon-induced disasters since the onset of monsoon in
the country on June 12, 2020.
Flood in Tanhau. Photo By RSS
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