Foreign investors seek project security

Sat, Jun 29, 2013 12:00 AM on Others, Others,

KAVRE, JUNE 29:

Demanding security to their projects, two foreign investors moved the Dhulikhel-based Kavre District Police Office today, accusing local youth of unleashing terror by vandalising and stealing their logistics.

Australian national Funz Frenz and Danish national Frank Boyle have been running a nursery under the Helping Hands Project in Saping, Chainpur, since 2008. The two have blamed local youth for resorting to vandalism, taking away different materials belonging to the project, and threatening and thrashing project staff. Frenz and Boyle have invested nine million rupees into the project, which grows more than a hundred plant species and conducts research. Frenz, agricultural expert and the nursery’s director, said, “Youth from the area stole chickens from the project site, damaged the solar panel and the panel tank on Wednesday night.” “This is too much.”

Moreover, local youth have been allegedly troubling them by chopping plants, threatening and attacking project workers, said Frenz. The victims said they had verbally informed police about the disturbances, but to no avail. The two are seeking police’s help as the situation has become ‘unbearable’. The investors said they will leave if police cannot ensure security.

Initially, the project had employed 25 locals, but the number has come down to three at present. Boyle said they stay out of the project area fearing the miscreants. “I quit the job after receiving threats that my legs will be broken if I continued,” said a former employee, who was accompanying the victims to district headquarters Dhulikhel. The youth used to seek money. They started troubling us as we did not oblige,” said the victims. The project covers 105 ropanis and used to provide training to locals on organic farming. It had provided one lakh rupees to a local monastery, one lakh to a temple and five lakh rupees to a road construction project.

DSP Krishnaji Adhikari, Kavre police chief, has pledged prompt probe and action against the guilty.

Source: THT