The heart of the lawmaker from Gorkha who was picked as a lawmaker by the cabinet, however, starts shivering when she knows there is meeting of Parliamentary Hearing Special Committee or her own party--Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), in the parliament secretariat.
She needs at least four strong men twice every meeting to carry her up and down the meeting halls in the fourth floor of the secretariat buildings and an aide must accompany her all the time.
“It is really painful to go up and down every meeting carried by others,” said Gurung who lost activeness of her both the legs in war. Marshals and Constituent Assembly (CA) Secretariat staffs or her party comrades have to carry her along with a wheelchair to the meeting halls situated at the fourth story of two buildings of the CA Secretariat.
Indra Kumari Rai on wheelchair.
Photo Courtesy: JICAfriends.net
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There are almost every day meetings in room no 411 of the CA secretariat’s main building nowadays. Her party holds meeting frequently at the fourth floor of another building in the CA. She had to wait for help for more than 10 minutes on Wednesday to get down to the ground floor after PHSC meeting.
Both the buildings don’t have escalators or lifts for disables to go up and down, though the parliament secretariat has constructed a number of ramps for easy rolling of the wheelchairs after the interim parliament was formed following success of April uprising in 2006.
Senior parliament secretariat officers admit that the secretariat is not disabled-friendly. “When Krishna Prasad Bhattarai was the prime minister, people had to carry him to the committee meeting hall at room no 411,” said parliament secretariat spokesperson Mukunda Sharma.
”We have not been able to install lifts in both the buildings because of technical and financial reasons,” Sharma added. He said the secretariat had requested the government to provide budget for installing lifts in the buildings since the time KP Bhattarai was Nepal’s PM for the second time in 1999.
Constitutional Committee held its meeting at the Public Accounts Committee hall of the one-story building when Nepali Congress President and former Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala came to put forth party’s concept on the future constitution, last week. The committee held the meeting at PAC hall as Koirala, an asthma patient, could not climb up to the fourth floor of the building.
Lawmaker Gurung was urging PHSC Chair KB Gurung to set the meeting somewhere on the ground floor so that she won’t have to depend fully on others. But Chairman Gurung remained silent as he is left with “no other option”.
The government recently made a decision to provide lawmaker Gurung with a three-wheeler motorcycle to support her travel. But she still has to depend fully on her first cousin to push her wheelchair. “A company is installing two additional wheels,” she added. “I heard it takes next two week for delivery.”
The 595-member House, currently, has two disabled members. The government recently had decided to provide an interpreter to lawmaker Raghav Bir Joshi who can’t hear and speak and a scooter to lawmaker Gurung who can’t walk.
yuvraj@myrepublica.com
