All children are not blessed equally. Those who are not blessed live in child homes, hoping to get sufficient food, better life and education. It is the child homes´ responsibility to ensure that their basic needs are fulfilled. But the children living in Nepal Children´s Organization (NCO), or Bal Mandir, are struggling to get even two squares of meal. [break]
Bal Mandir, a non-governmental organization, is facing economic crisis for the last ten years. As a result, around 400 children, who live in different branches of Bal Mandir across the country, are not getting proper food, education and health facilities.
Apart from orphans, children affected by the war, children of jail inmates and abandoned children also live in Bal Mandir.
Until two years ago, Bal Mandir had more than 600 children. The number has now dwindled to 400. As it has no financial resources to look after more children, Bal Mandir has stopped admitting new children since the last couple of years.
Bal Mandir runs kindergarten schools in all districts with the support of District Development Committees. Bal Mandir´s financial crisis has hurt these schools as well.
As it struggles to manage even the operating cost, Bal Mandir has failed to provide salaries to its around 100 staff for the last 22 months. On Monday, the disgruntled Bal Mandir staff even lock in all the board members of the organization in a hall. The locked board members were freed only in the wee hours of Tuesday.
According to Manmohan Gopal Shrestha, treasurer of Bal Mandir, the organization immediately needs Rs 32 millions to pay school fees of its children, staff salaries and other expenses.
As Bal Mandir children and staff bear the brunt of financial crisis, the management is now busily searching for donors.
“The organization survives on donation but we do not have regular donors,” says Krishna Dhamakar Shah, general secretary of Bal Mandir. “Apart from donation, we also relied on international adoption of our children. But due to procedural difficulties in international adoption, we are unable to tap that source of funding as well."
According to Shah, until 1995, Bal Mandir received 40 per cent of its budget from the government. "We sought donors help only for 60 percent of our budget," he says. The situation was good and children were getting good facilities. During that time, foreigners could adopt children from Bal Mandir. And, in return, Bal Mandir would get US$ 5000 for each adopted child.
A few years ago, after anomalies in adoption process were exposed by the media, the government imposed a ban on international adoption of children from Nepal. Although the ban was lifted later, very few foreigners have come to Nepal to adopt children since then.
“Several child homes were involved in making money through adoption. Their shameless work has hit us," says Puni Raj Maharjan, chief of Adoption Section at Bal Mandir. “Because of them we have to suffer till today. Now we are promoting domestic adoption.”
According to Maharjan, NCO charges Rs 75,000 for domestic adoption. The organization is promoting domestic adoption because it does not have to deal with all the negative consequences of the international adoption.
Till 2003, NCO managed money from their savings. But after that, the economic crisis grew worse.
The financial problem has seemed insurmountable since 2007, when the organization sent some of its staff abroad to inspect the places where the adopted children were staying. The entire cost of the visit was borne by NCO.
According to NCO, approximately Rs 10 million was spent in the visit. From that year, the staff has not been getting their salaries on time and the organization even failed to pay the school fees of the children.
“We feel sorry for all the staff and the children because we could not provide them better facilities. Today, we do not have support from the government, so we have to look for the donors to run our organization,” says Rita Singh Baidya, chairperson of the NCO.
After being locked for 13 hours till Tuesday morning, the management team of Bal Mandir has agreed to address the demands raised by Bal Mandir staff.
In a press meet on Tuesday, the Bal Mandir management team formed a working committee to implement eight-point demand raised by the employees.
Meanwhile, Bal Mandir´s general secretary Krishna Dhamakar Shah resigned from his post, to be replaced by Subash Kumar Pokhrel. Tulasi Narayan Shrestha is appointed as the new vice-chairman of the organization. And other vacant posts were also fulfilled by the new management team. Similarly, Dharmendra Paswan has been appointed deputy-general secretary.
The management committee also scrapped its previous decision to promote Pramila Shrestha to the post of deputy director of Bal Mandir.
The disgruntled Bal Mandir staff had locked 20 board members along with chairperson Rita Singh Baidya in a meeting hall of the organization.
“We have stopped our protest program for now,” said Arjun Dhungel, general-secretary of the staff association. “That does not mean we will not carry out any protest program in future. If this management also fails to address our demands, they will also be removed.”
The association has demanded immediate release of salaries due over 22 months, salary increment and disbursement of salaries on the last date of each month, as per the government rules. Similarly, the agitating staff members have asked the organization to be transparent about funds and make public the information such as the source of fund, amount received and how the money is spent every month. Other demands include, fixing the facilities to be given by the NCO, abrogation of all wrongful promotions and postings, special incentives for the residential staffs and making all NCO staff across the country permanent.
“Few demands have already been addressed and they have asked for six months to fulfill other demands,” said Dhungel.
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