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Senior Citizens to Hold Rally
The Rising Nepal
Nepal
September 23, 2005
The Ministry of Women Children and Social Welfare is organising an elderly citizens' peace march to mark the Elderly Citizens' Day on October 1st.
National Senior Citizen Organisation Network Nepal (NSCONN) and Senior Citizen Welfare Association of Nepal (SCWAN) organized a press conference to make public the event in the offing and highlighted the current situation and problems faced by elderly people in the society here on Thursday.
According to the chairperson of NSCONN and SCWAN, Dr Leela Devi K.C, the elderly peoples' current need is access to affordable medical services.
She said that elderly people did not have such an access, and most of them were depressed on not getting the care and attention from their family and society.
K.C. said that establishment of day care centers would come as a panacea to the elderly citizens who were in a state of neglect. The government has started to focus on the woes of the elderly citizens when the ninth five-year plan was introduced, but even when the tenth plan is well into its third year, nothing much seems to have been done to alleviate the problems of the elderly citizens.
The government to some extent has excluded the elderly people from its priority list giving them false hope for improved lives, said K.C.
Hutta Ram Baidhya, an octogenarian, who is also a founder member of NSCONN said the country still lacks relevant laws to ensure the care of the elderly people. The dearth of laws regarding how elderly citizens need to be dealt with has led to a state of vacuum, he said.
So the primary necessity is to enact relevant laws and a legal body that could look into the issues related with the elderly citizens, he said.
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