Minister for Land Reform Dambar Shrestha

Minister for Land Reform Dambar Shrestha has expressed regret that the 'Kamaiyas', or bonded agricultural laborers, are 'free' on paper only, but actually haven't been liberated from oppression and bondage that they were subjected to since ages.

Speaking at a program in Chitwan Sunday, Minister Shrestha said the government knows about this and is now seriously onto the task of liberating the 'freed Kamaiyas', as they are known, for real.

There is still a strong tradition of keeping Kamaiyas, sometime a whole family of them, among the wealthy landlords of the Terai, although the government had in July 2000 made bonded labor illegal after releasing the 'Kamaiya' bonded agricultural workers from their debts.

Minister Shrestha also informed that the government is soon coming up with a separate Landless Commission to solve the problem of landless people in the country once and for all.

He said that it is in fact the wealthy landowners who are reaping all the benefits coming in the name of the landless people.

This situation will soon come to an end, he promised.

The government has from time to time been coming up with programs to address the problems of the landless people in the country, including distribution of cultivable lands to poor farmers having no lands of their own.

But critics have mostly slammed the government's program, saying that most of the benefits actually go to rich landowners than the people it was actually meant for. nepalnews.com