No contact with home, Nepalese consulate staff a worried lot

Officials of the Nepalese Consulate here are spending sleepless nights as they have not been able to get in touch with their families back home since Saturday, when the massive earthquake jolted the Himalayan country and killed over 4000 people.
"I have not been able to contact my family since Saturday. I don't know the condition of my family, whether they are alive or not. I am really tense," said Dulal, a staff working in Nepal consulate.
Hit by severe shortage of food, water, electricity and medicines and buffeted by fear, tens of thousands of people are out in the open as quake-hit Nepal is desperately seeking international help to tide over the crisis.

Sita Basnet, a senior official of the consulate, said there are three more staff in the consulate, who are unable to get in touch with their family members in Nepal.
"Apart from Dulal, there are three more staff in our consulate, who could not make any contact with their family members. They are very tense. The communications lines are completely snapped... Its very tough to get in touch with them," Basnet told PTI.
Basnet said they have managed to contact officials in Nepal and requested them to trace the family members of these staff members working in Kolkata.

Nepal's Consul General in Kolkata Chandra Kumar Ghimire said communications lines to the Himalayan Country are in disarray due to the earthquake.

"I was trying to get in touch with my family members after the quake on Saturday. But it took about two and a half hours to contact them," he said.
Ghimire said he was talking over phone to his friend Bipin Dhakal, a famous author in Nepal, on Saturday when his friend panicked and told him that the ground under him was moving.
"And the lines got disconnected at that moment. Later on I came to know that he is fine. But that was the moment when the quake struck," Ghimire said.