Thirteen years after the liberation of Kamaiyas, the freed bonded labourers in Kailali and Bardiya districts are still waiting for their rehabilitation.

Pashupati Chaudhary, chairman of the Freed Kamaiya Society, said out of the total 7,016 freed Kamaiyas who are yet to be rehabilitated in the districts, 4,301 are landless while the remaining 2,715 have received land ownership certificates but are yet to get land.

He said the Kamaiyas are yet to be resettled in the districts as concerned District Forest Offices (DFO) and local community forest user groups protested a decision to provide forest land to the former bonded labourers. He said though concerned authorities decided that the Kamaiyas should be provided with 440 hectares of land in Kailali, the decision could not be implemented due to the protest of the DFO and community forest users’ groups in the district.

According to the Freed Kamaiya Society, the freed bonded labourers have captured around 1,354 hectares of land in Kailali. The captured land belongs to the Tikapur Multiple Campus, Agriculture Development Bank, Mainawadanda School of Pratappur, Janata Higher Secondary School of Munuwa, Jayandra Saraswati Medical College of Geta, Attariya Range Post, old airport area in Dhangadhi and various community forests in the district.

Chaudhary said the freed Kamaiyas have also constructed houses on the captured land.

26 families get land in Bardiya

BANKE: The District Land Reform Office (DLRO) in Banke has rehabilitated 26 freed Kamailya families in the past two years. Earlier, the Kamaiyas were living on public land and as well as the land belonging to various community forests at Baijapur, Udharapur, Phettepur and Bankatawa. Om Prasad Devkota, section officer at the DLRO, said each of the nine former Kamiya families who have been rehabilitated at Loknagar in Kohalpur were given 12 dhurs of land each. Likewise, he said each of the other 14 Kamaiya families were provided with five katthas of land and the remaining three families received two kattas of land each. However, Pattu Tharu, chairman of the Freed Kamaiya Society in the district, said many former Kamaiya families are still awaiting their rehabilitation though the government declared the district a ‘free Kamaiya area’ six years ago. According to available data, there are 1,838 freed Kamaiyas in Bardiya. (PR)

Published on: 18 July 2013 | The Kathmandu Post