Nepal Association of the Blind celebrates silver jubilee

Published On: July 21, 2018 03:47 AM NPT

KATHMANDU, JULY 20; Nepal Association of the Blind (NAB) marked its silver jubilee amidst various cultural events in the capital on Friday. Started at 2:30 pm at Rastriya Nach Ghar in Jamal, the function chaired by NAB central president Ramesh Pokharel saw the participation of Nepal Community Party (NCP) Chairman and former Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal as THE chief guest and National Assembly member Prakash Panta as a special guest.

Addressing a crowd of about 150 attendees, former Prime Minister Dahal lauded NAB on the successful completion of 25 years of inception and expressed his happiness about the independent nature of the differently-able persons. “I feel happy and proud that you people have been fighting for your rights,” he said, “You have proved that you can be contributing citizens of the nation.”

Dahal didn't spare the opportunity to accuse the opposition parties of being propagators of instability and anarchy. “Nepal has been able to secure this stable government after 70 years,” he said, “These propagators of instability and anarchy are trying to spoil the environment for prosperity.”

NAB Director Nar Bahadur Limbu questioned the constitution's exclusion of the differently able, claiming that they have been deprived of their rights to get involved in nation-building under different pretexts. “The constitution ensured the participation of differently able and partially differently able persons in parliament, but when the time came for action, only a partially differently able person was included in parliament,” he said, questioning, “How can we say that this constitution is inclusive when not a single differently able person was included in parliament?”

At the function, two journalists, namely Hari Sharan Bista and Damodar Neupane were felicitated for their contribution to raising the voice of the blind. A Nepali language based Text-to-speech (TTS) and a poetry collection written by NAB Director Limbu was also launched during the function. NAB is an umbrella organization of the blind in Nepal. It has 51 district branches with 3,000 general members across the country.