Let's vacate Parliament to shelter evacuees: Nepali lawmaker jabs govt over failure to set up quarantine facilities

Nepal's Federal Socialist Party MP Pradeep Yadav on Tuesday hit out at the central government over its failure to finalise the location to set up quarantine facilities, and sarcastically proposed that those to be rescued from coronavirus-hit Wuhan city in China should be sheltered in the Parliament.

"The government has said that the aircraft to evacuate them (Nepali citizens) are kept ready. Then when will they fly-off for China? It's already been 5 days that the Nepal government has been searching on for a place to keep those to-be-evacuated from China. No location has been identified until now. Should we vacate the Parliament building?" Yadav said.

"Let's vacate it (the Parliament building) and keep those returning from China here. Let's move our parliamentary meeting out under the tarpaulins," he added.

Nepal is working to evacuate its citizens from China, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak that has reported 426 deaths. As many as 180 Nepalis, including three children have approached the country's embassy in Beijing, demanding their evacuation from the country, as per a list of names published by the embassy.

The country is yet to finalise on places where the evacuees would be kept for a quarantine period of at least two weeks.

Responding to Yadav in the Parliament, Bhanubhakta Dhakal, Minister of Health and Population said that the government has "surveyed many places" and "is inching closer to finalise the place where the students to be evacuated would be kept.

"Some of those locations are near residential areas and the government believes that places far from the urban settlement would be appropriate," Dhakal said.

Several countries, including India, have airlifted their citizens from China while more are planning the evacuation of their people.