THREE STAR

THREE STAR CLUB PLAYS A DRAW IN BHUTAN; THREE
NEPAL CLUBS PARTICIPATING
Kathmandu, 22 July: League champion Three Star Club drew its match with Sikkim United 1-1 in the King’s Cup in Thimpu, Bhutan,  Sunday.
MMC and Machindra FC from Nepal are also participating in the tournament from Nepal.
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ASHOK RAI’S FSPN LIKELY TO BOYCOTT VOTE
Kathmandu, 22 July: The Ashok Rai-led Federal Socialist Party Nepal (FSPN) is likely to follow in the CPN-Maoist and its 32 allies’ footsteps as it has decided to foil the Constituent Assembly elections held under the ‘existing circumstances’, Roshan Sedhai writes in The Kathmandi Post..
A meeting of the party’s Standing Committee on Sunday unanimously agreed to launch ‘result-oriented protests’, which might include a ‘forceful retaliation’ in the long run. Its decision comes after several rounds of futile talks with the government and some political parties through formal and informal channels.
“The government is not in a position to address our concerns as the real power lies somewhere else. The party has decided that it’s no use talking with the puppet government,” said Rajendra Shrestha, general secretary of the FSPN.
The party is reportedly making internal preparations for a fresh round of protests, expected to start this month. Leaders said that an anti-election campaign will begin with an awareness drive and end with “people’s revolt” across the country. “They said a confrontation is inevitable if the four parties and the government go ahead with the election plan by sidelining our concerns,” said a FSPN leader requesting anonymity.
Like other dissident parties campaigning against the November elections, the FSPN has been demanding an end to the four-party ‘political syndicate’ by terminating the 11-point and 25-point agreements. The party has stressed that the current political deadlock, including differences over the Khil Raj Regmi government and the CA elections, should be addressed through an all-party political assembly. The party’s other demands are keeping a 60:40 ratio of proportional CA seats intact and providing voting rights to Nepali diasporas, among other things.
Earlier, the party had collaborated with the CPN-Maoist-led 33 parties alliance to launch a protest against the election date announcement. But the FSPN refused backed out citing differences over their demands.
While the dissent bloc headed by Baidya want the incumbent government to be replaced with a political one, other parties, including Rai’s and Upendra Yadav’s, are ready to go to the elections under an interim government if their other demands are addressed. Unlike the CPN-Maoist and its allies, Rai and Yadav have already registered their parties at the Election Commission.
FSPN leaders are particularly irked with the High-level Political Committee (HLPC) for paying attention to the 33-party alliance. “Many parties, including the CPN-UML, do not want our party to contest the CA polls. That’s why they are in no mood of addressing our concern,” said Shresth

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IMMUNIZATION CARD COMPULSORY FOR ADMISSION

Kathmandu, 22 July: The government is planning to make immunisation cards mandatory for students before their admission to schools. It has already made plans to have students taken to immunisation centres near them if found unvaccinated, Manish Gautam writes in The Kathmandu Post..
The plan will materialise once the National Immunisation Act, that is likely to be forwarded to the President, gets endorsed.
The move is part of the Ministry of Health and Population’s (MoHP) plan to ensure total immunisation coverage.
According to data at the Ministry of Education (MoE), around 7.5 million students are enrolled in 34,000 schools, both government and private, across the country while around 1 million get enrolled in class one every year.
Chief of the Child Health Division Dr Tara Pokhrel said they have been holding talks with the MoE on the matter and are getting positive response.
Joint Secretary at the MoE Lava Deo Awasthi said they will soon give a nod to such a provision.
Presently, the government has been administering 10 vaccines to newborns free of cost. Children are inoculated with the BCG vaccine against tuberculosis right after their birth. Similarly, the pentavalent vaccine, administered 45 days after birth, is a combination of five vaccines that protects children from five diseases, including diphtheria, tetanus and hepatitis-B. Vaccines are also administered against polio and measles. The Japanese Encephalitis vaccine is given to children older than two years in 30 high risk districts. A few months ago, the government included rubella vaccination under the routine immunisation programme. Apart from this, all pregnant women are administered with the TT vaccine.
The Child Health Division estimates that around 650,000 babies are born in Nepal every year. As part of its comprehensive multi-year immunisation plan 2011-16, the government has also planned to achieve and maintain at least 90 percent vaccination coverage in each district by 2016. According to the Nepal Demographic Health Survey (NDHS)-2011, 87 percent of children are immunised in the country.

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