KATHMANDU, Dec 28: The government is to provide monthly Rs 5,000 as livelihood allowance to the terminally sick people.

A meeting of the Council of Ministers held in Singha Durbar today decided to provide an allowance of Rs 5,000 a month to those people whose both kidneys do not function, the cancer patients and the physically incapacitated people due to spinal injury, Minister for Finance Gyanendra Bahadur Karki said.

DR PUSHPA CHAUDHARI APPOINTED HEALTH SECRETARY
The meeting has decided to appoint Dr Pushpa Chaudhari as the Secretary at the Ministry of Health.

The position was vacant since the retirement of then Health Secretary Dr Kiran Regmi three weeks ago. Chaudhary, as the senior-most official, was taking the charge as Acting Secretary since then.

According to Minister Karki, the meeting decided to give instructions to the bodies concerned to carry out the reconstruction of the historic Ranipokhari strictly as per the standards set by the Department of Archaeology for resolving the dispute over the reconstruction of this monument which was damaged by the April 25, 2015 Gorkha Earthquake.

The meeting decided to accept the loan assistance of Rs 6.21 billion that the World Bank is to provide in the second phase with the objective of further strengthening the Vocational Education and Training Enhancement Project and making it effective while operating its first phase good practices in an institutionalized manner.

Minister Karki said that the today’s Council of Ministers meeting also decided to accept the Rs 1.4 billion assistance that the government of the Republic of Korea was making available to Nepal for establishing a research and development centre in the Kathmandu University. RSS