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While most of us were busy whipping up dalgona coffee and baking banana bread during Covid-19 lockdowns, Ayushma Rana was out distributing food packets to those in need. Despite her family’s repeated pleas to stay home as she had two small children and aging parents, Rana could often be found scurrying from one place to another in Bhaisepati, Lalitpur, trying to reach as many daily wage workers as possible.

“I told my family I would help 100 people and then I would stay at home. When that goal was met, I said 50 more, and I’d stop. But before I knew it, I’d managed to reach 6,000 people,” says Rana, founder of ST Group which deals in luxury gift packaging and event management.

Ayushma Rana distributing food packages during Covid 19 lockdown.

This, however, wasn’t anything new for her. Rana has always tried to do whatever little she could whenever she could. During the 2015 earthquakes, her home in Ekantakuna, Lalitpur, got destroyed but she and her brother were out helping victims with food, medicines, and other necessities. Since 2016, she has also been distributing socks and woolen caps to street children, vendors, milkmen, and garbage collectors every winter.

“I believe each one of us must do what we can whenever we can. Every little bit counts especially in a country like Nepal where the government is apathetic and so many people struggle to make ends meet on a daily basis,” she says.

Her views are echoed by Saurav Rimal, who is involved in various smart city projects. Rimal says we have, for far too long, been complacent and thus dependent on the local authorities and the government. We are quick to complain but hesitate to take action, he adds.

When Kathmandu was under a lockdown, Rimal visited places in the city like Gongabu bus park, Bhrikutimandap, and Kirtipur that used to be crowded pre-Covid. His goal was to find daily wage earners who were struggling to put food on the table.

Saurav Rimal feeding monkeys during the Covid-19 lockdown.

Rimal’s efforts kept more than 500 families from starving during the lockdown. He also fed monkeys and stray dogs in and around the Pashupati and Swayambhunath areas.

Recently, Rimal distributed jackets and blankets to sugarcane farmers from Sarlahi who were in Kathmandu for a protest. They were asking the government to see to it that the sugar mills cleared their dues.

Many of them, he says, didn’t have a proper place to stay and had flimsy clothes ill-suited for Kathmandu’s steadily dipping temperature. Rimal used his own savings and money sent by friends abroad to buy them some warm clothes as well as make arrangements for a decent place to stay.

“I know what I’m doing isn’t sustainable. There is only so much I will be able to do with my limited resources. But I still intend to do everything I can for as long as I can,” says Rimal.

This is where unity as Nepalis would come in handy, he adds. If communities came together to help those in need instead of merely cribbing about how the government doesn’t do anything, we could witness a sweeping change across the nation.

“Unfortunately, most people have the mindset that as long as they are paying their taxes, they needn’t be bothered with anything else,” he says.

No help is small

Juju Kaji Maharjan, who comes from a family of social workers, feels this is because most people underestimate the power of a single person working for a cause. They don’t think feeding a homeless person or helping a family with their hospital bills can make much of a difference. 

Juju Kaji Maharjan distributing food after the 2015 earthquake.

What most don’t understand, he says, is that small actions can have a ripple effect and ultimately lead to big changes. The results of those small actions aren’t immediately visible that a lot of people find it difficult to stay motivated.

Rana says helping others gives her a sense of peace and more people should do it because it feels so good. “It’s an endorphins rush that you’ve got to experience,” she says. When she hands someone a pair of socks, she is consoled by the fact that the receiver might stay a little warm, at least for that night. Every selfless action has the potential to make life a little better for someone else and for you too, she adds.

According to Dristi Thapa, who works at The Orphan’s Home in Nakku, Lalitpur, no help is big or small. What matters is you choose to operate out of a place of love and that will never go unappreciated.

Thapa started working at the orphanage as she has always believed in the importance of giving back and making a difference, as small as that might be. The children at the home, she says, take delight in the tiniest of things. For example, they were ecstatic about a slice of cake they all got on her birthday. Their eyes just lit up, she says. You would have to consider yourself lucky to be a harbinger of that kind of pure happiness.

Dristi Thapa celebrating her birthday with orphans.

“I might not be able to do very much but if I can bring even the littlest of joys in a child’s life then it will be a life well lived,” she says.  

Joy in feeding

Jimi Prem Karthak, proprietor of The Lunch Box, a fast-food restaurant in Kupondole, Lalitpur, runs Food for Naanis program. It was initiated with a simple idea of providing good food for children who need it. The program runs in the city and, though they get a lot of flak for it, Karthak says there is a reason they aren’t keen on focusing on rural areas just yet.

“People in villages grow their own food and most families eat nutritious meals. On the other hand, many low-income families in Kathmandu don’t care about nutrition. It’s also, I think, a case of bad parenting,” he says.

However, Food for Naanis isn’t a charity program and he isn’t a social worker. He doesn’t want to be a messiah for those his program helps. Run entirely on donations by friends and family, and with contacts he has made over the years, he says he is running a party (much like a political one) where there is good governance.

Children eating from food boxes under the Food for Naanis program headed by Jimi Prem Karthak.

“This approach works because there are many people who want to help but don’t have the time to do so on their own. Nor do they know who to trust with their money. If they see there are people who are doing things in an organized way, it’s a win-win situation for all of us,” he says.

So, in that way, Food for Naanis is actually a medium to connect those who want to help with those who seek it. The program has a record of feeding 2,300 children in around two dozen orphanages in a single day.

However, transparency and accountability are often serious issues when you start taking donations, even if they come from friends and relatives. Rana made multiple appeals through social media as she sought help to provide nutritious food to pregnant women, lactating mothers and newborn babies.

To assure those who sent her money through various online payment portals, she took to posting photos of the supplies as well as the deliveries. She also posted photos of hospital bills when she used the funds to treat Covid-19 patients who were unable to afford healthcare.

Do it anyway

Karthak says transparency is sometimes a struggle because orphanages and schools’ authorities don’t always want him to take photos. It’s often a hassle to explain that he just wants to show donors that their money has reached the intended beneficiary.

It’s this complexity in an otherwise noble undertaking that makes Rimal steer clear of donations, though his circle of friends has helped him time and again. He would rather people give what they can to those in need themselves. You could, he says, start by giving a homeless person a packet of biscuits. It could be as basic as that.

“What’s important is that we change our mindset that a little won’t go a long way,” he says, urging you to imagine what, say, 500 rupees set aside from your salary every month could eventually amount to and how that could help someone who doesn’t have the same privileges in life as you.

“And think what could happen if every person in your community started doing this,” he says.

Maharjan agrees that, if you aren’t happy with how things are, you have to start doing what you can instead of always placing the responsibility on someone else’s shoulders.

“The thing about taking up social causes is that besides being an immensely gratifying experience, it’s addictive as well. Once you start and get the feel of it, you cannot stop,” he concludes.

The Tatopani border point with Nepal’s northern neighbor China, which had been closed under various pretexts, partially reopened from February 9. Before that, the checkpoint had been completely closed for 20 days. The Chinese government had completely shut down the checkpoint from January 7 to 27 for the reconstruction of the Miteri Bridge.

Six goods-bearing containers arrived at the dry port of Larcha in Bhotekoshi village municipality between noon and evening on February 9 after the Tatopani checkpoint came into partial operation, informs Lal Bahadur Khatri, chief of customs office at the dry port. According to Khatri, six containers stuck at the Miteri Bridge since the border closure arrived at the port. “From there, the goods were loaded into six containers with Nepali number plates and dispatched to their destinations,” Khatri adds. So far, the border is open only one-way, from China to Nepal. Export of Nepali goods to China has not resumed, including at the Rasuwa port.

According to Khatri, at least 20 containers will enter the country daily from Khasa with the border’s reopening. “The Chinese side is also positive about increasing the number of containers it exports to Nepal. The checkpoint will be fully functional from February 14,” Khatri says, adding that the Chinese side has made internal preparations to send 40 containers of goods daily. With only 48 trolleys at the customs office in Larcha, the Nepali side has made arrangements to receive only 20 containers a day.

Tatopani is the main trade border point connecting Nepal and China. The Rasuwa checkpoint has been opened as an alternative to the Tatopani border, which has been blocked time and again under various pretexts. The import from China is worth over Rs 20 billion a year while export is worth only around Rs 3 billion, with the Tatopani border acting as the main trading route. According to Naresh Katuwal, president of the National Federation of Nepali Entrepreneurs, the number of containers arriving in Nepal daily via Tatopani is insufficient. “The entrepreneurs have been facing this problem for the past 3-4 years,” Katuwal says. “Even though the Tatopani checkpoint is operational, we have been unable to bring enough containers.” The federation has asked for import facilities for at least 25 to 30 goods-bearing containers a day.

Bachchu Poudel, president of the Nepal Himalayan Cross-Border Chamber of Commerce and Industry, says China has implemented a ‘quota system’ at Tatopani. According to Poudel, the containers with fresh goods are still stuck in China and only the containers carrying backdated orders have arrived.

Poudel says Chinese control over bilateral trade will remain in place until Nepali containers reach the Khasa market without any hindrance. According to him, the checkpoint will again be affected for the next three weeks with the approach of the Chinese new year. China has been closing its borders every year during its lunar new year.

Nepal is set to produce hydrogen fuel using excess electricity that would otherwise go to waste. Although this fuel is new to Nepal, in developed countries, it is used in three different formats.

Nepal Oil Corporation and Kathmandu University have jointly started the process of producing hydrogen fuel in Nepal following the signing of a bilateral agreement between them to work together in the field of fuel and energy.

According to Surendra Kumar Poudel, executive director of NOC, following the agreement, the national oil monopoly plans on producing and exporting hydrogen fuel. Thus far, the corporation has been buying fuel from India and selling it in the domestic market.

“The bilateral agreement is a cornerstone in the development of technology to generate fuel from electricity,” Poudel says. According to him, the plan to generate hydrogen fuel using excess electricity from hydropower projects including the Upper Tamakoshi is being materialized.

The Nepal Electricity Authority has projected around 53-840 MW of electricity to go to waste this year due to lack of consumption. The projection is based on the calculation that an additional 825 MW of electricity will be generated this fiscal year. This electricity is likely to be wasted during the rainy season due to high production, low consumption and zero export.

Electricity worth potentially billions of rupees is currently being wasted. With the KU’s technical assistance, the corporation has put forward a plan to produce three types of hydrogen fuels (gas, liquid and solid) using that excess electricity. The corporation can potentially earn billions of rupees by exporting hydrogen fuel while at the same time making a big dent on an annual fuel export bill of around Rs 200 billion.

As per the agreement, the Green Hydrogen Lab under KU’s Department of Mechanical Engineering will in the near future hold a demonstration on hydrogen fuel production using electricity. According to lab team leader Dr Biraj Thapa, a public program to produce fuel is being organized within February. After the program’s completion, production will then start and be scaled up in phases, he informs.

According to Thapa, about 50 units of electricity is required to produce 1 kg of hydrogen fuel. “However, due to the high cost of electricity in our country, the cost of production is going to be a bit high for time being.” If excess electricity is available at an affordable price, 1 kg of fuel can be produced at Rs 600. At current rates, it takes Rs 1,600 to produce a kg of hydrogen fuel.

Hydrogen fuel can be stored for a long time by converting it into gas, liquid and solid matter, as required. The corporation has prepared a plan to start producing hydrogen gas cylinders and gradually displace the existing LPG ones. Similarly, diesel-powered vehicles in the capital will be replaced by those powered by liquid hydrogen. The best bit? This fuel is pollution-free.

A 55-year-old domestic worker was slapped because she forgot to close the main gate. She still works at the same place because ‘these things happen’.

A 33-year-old house help was fined Rs 500 because she broke a flower vase. Every other month, she says she gets less than the Rs 3,500 she was initially promised as she ‘always makes mistakes’.

A 32-year-old mother of two sons, who works from 7 am to 8 pm in various households, had to travel to her village for five days. All of her employers told her she wouldn’t be paid for those days. At every place, she had worked for over six months, without a single day off.

Maids in Kathmandu don’t have it easy. Working hours aren’t fixed. They aren’t paid decent salaries. They don’t get holidays, except for a day or two during Dashain. They can’t choose what they will or won’t do. And, worse, they are often abused—verbally and/or physically.

And yet, they continue to work under dire conditions because their families depend on their earnings, however meager. What they make helps them pay rent, buy food, or send their children to school.

“No one has hit me but I have friends who have been slapped and beaten with brooms for breaking kitchen items or daring to argue when being scolded,” says Kabita Tamang, 37, who has been working at different homes in Kathmandu for a decade now. Her first salary as a house help fetched her Rs 700 a month.

Tamang says at the first house she worked in, she would get scolded for little things like if they ran out of detergent or the dishes clanked while being put away. The comments would be scathing and derogatory. This, she adds, is normal in most of the places she has worked at. Nasty comments from employers are par for course.

The problems stem from our work not being respected, says Tamang. Some of her friends, she adds, work long hours for very less (as low as Rs 3,000 a month for two hours a day) as they themselves don’t consider what they do important. They hesitate to ask for a raise or to express their dissatisfaction over what they are told to do (like clean the toilets, for instance) fearing they will be replaced.

In Kathmandu, families, young couples, and even single working professionals largely depend on maids. The fact is everybody needs a house help. Without one, it’s like you are missing a limb. But housework is considered a menial task and those who do it are placed in the lowest rung of the social hierarchy. 

Master-and-servant

This can change only if there is a system in place that ensures their rights, says Jashmin Jimee, associate at Hamri Bahini, a green social enterprise that aims to create respectable jobs for disadvantaged women.

Since 2013 Hamri Bahini has been placing women in various households for different purposes like cleaning, cooking, and babysitting. However, they have fixed hourly rates as well as the provision for weekly and yearly holidays. Unlike many maids in Kathmandu, the women they find jobs for don’t have to work erratic hours and get a day off at the end of the week.

“We also make sure the employers are ready to give their maids an annual 10 percent raise,” says Jimee.

Tamang says she was paid Rs 3,000 a month at one of the many homes she worked at. She worked for four years without a raise, till she eventually decided to quit and take up a 10 to 5 babysitting job for Rs 7,500 a month.

At City Maids Services Pvt. Ltd, the founder, Kishori Raut, says he sometimes get the sense that some people who call to inquire about the company’s services just want cheap labor.

“Most people seem to have a master-and-servant approach to this when in actuality it should be a symbiotic relationship, where both parties benefit,” says Raut.

Despite the relationship between maids and employers being one of interdependence, maids often end up as the disadvantaged party with no say whatsoever about the kind of work they do, the hours, or their pay.

Moreover, the system of hiring, even today, is mostly done informally, by word of mouth. Salary is determined randomly, based on what the employers are willing to pay or what they consider ‘enough’.

Little expectations

Shobha Budhathoki, 32, has been working as a domestic help in Kathmandu for seven years. She feels even small, basic things—like talking to them properly and not scolding them, a Rs 500 annual raise, or a day off every month if not every week—would help domestic workers feel secure and valued in their jobs.

“I don’t think we are asking for much. But the sad fact is we get so little in return for our labor. It’s hurtful but there is nothing we can do about it,” she says. Budhathoki adds that oftentimes, while being hired, they are told they need to do certain chores for a certain amount. But as days go by, the workload increases, one at a time, while the renumeration remains the same.

Prakash Basnet, founder of Help2Shine, a service that connects domestic helpers to households, says 90 percent of the 4,000 maids registered at the company have had similar, or worse, experience. Basnet says the company’s primary aim is to make sure women looking to work as domestic helpers find safe spaces where their work is valued.

“It wouldn’t be a stretch to say domestic helpers basically run the homes they work in. But they aren’t given that recognition. Rather, there is an underlying bias that makes people look down on them,” says Basnet.

This, Basnet believes, reinforces class discrimination and traps maids in a complex web of poverty from where there is no breaking free, no matter how hard they try.

“Many women have asked us not to reveal they are domestic workers. There is no dignity in the work, even though what they do is so essential to keeping a home running smoothly,” he adds.

Missing data, forgotten workers

According to Nepal’s labor force survey 2017/18, there are over three million women in the labor market. A report titled ‘Domestic Workers, Risk and Social Protection in Nepal’—by Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing, a global research-policy network—estimates that there are 250,000 domestic workers in Nepal.

Data on them is mostly missing as domestic workers aren’t recognized as an occupational group by the Central Bureau of Statistics. The Labor Act of 2017 specifies that the government can set a separate minimum wage for domestic workers but nothing has been done so far. Domestic workers, though an intrinsic part of our society, have completely skipped the government’s radar.

Raut and Basnet both say it’s difficult to ensure domestic workers are treated and paid well as they fall under the informal sector and there are no set rules and regulations governing their employment.

Hiring of domestic workers though companies like Hamri Bahini, City Maid Services, Help2Shine and similar services can help create a better work environment for them. These companies provide workers a platform where they can lodge their complaints and which can campaign on their behalf.

A 28-year-old domestic help in Lalitpur who found work through Help2Shine says she feels secure because of the company’s backing. Being recruited through a company, she says, keeps her employers honest and gives her the confidence that her problems, should any arise, will be addressed.

However, even if domestic workers don’t go through human resource companies and find jobs on their own, within their communities, there needs to be a way to guarantee their rights.

“To change things, it’s going to take strong policies from the government’s side and more empathy from employers,” says Basnet, adding those who can afford to pay a maid can definitely afford to pay them a little better. 

As Budhathoki puts it, “A 1,000 rupees might not be a big amount for those who employ us, but for us it means assured snacks at school for our children.”