Garbage strike over

For a city with that depend on their faithful garbage collectors to sweep and collect the piles of garbage that pile up in big heaps in and on the streets of Kathmandu, the garbage strike that has been in effect since January 21 has left the city stinking. Today the strike ended but the employees of Dharan municipality might still have to air out their offices after furious locals "sprinkled garbage in all the rooms" the day before yesterday.

A more serious matter of discussion today is the Maoist disruption of the Upper Karnali Hydro Project. This project is partly funded by foreign(not Nepali)money and partly built to generate power being used electricity. According to the Maoist vice chairman Narayan Kaji Shrestha, also known as "Prakash" said that the party did not instruct the local wing to obstruct the project. He said however that, "our party has raise the issue of national independence and has been saying big projects should not be initiated during the transitional period". The transitional period being the present period before the dead line in late May when the dead line for writing a Nepali constitution runs out.

The problem of electricity is a major problem, not only because it does interrupt every day life in an annoying but minor way for a passer through like myself. Not being able to charge my cell phone of watch a dvd is hardly a major problem. And there are always candles at night. It would of course be nice to have a continuous access to water but since the water pump is located under our house and dependent on electricity to pump this is not always the case. Still, I run no business that now has folded because of lack of dependable electricity. I have no fridge or freezer that can't work because it is turned off three times a day and I sit in no bank or university and swear because the so-called emergency generator doesn't generate enough power to make my daily tasks possible.

The good news, or...eh, information expressed yesterday by the State Minister for Energy Chandra Singh Bhattarai was that the power-cuts will not exceed 12 hours a day(we have 9-11 now). He also claimed that the country will be free from power cuts within 3 years and, he adds "We are going to confiscate the electricity licences taken by the water maffias and take action against them".

Hmmm...water maffia? I though the power cuts were due to not enough electricity being generated because of an unusually dry winter season(no rain and therefor no energy)or because of lack of funds for being power from India but what do I know...