By A Staff Reporter, Kathmandu, Mar 30: As the government extended the lockdown for one week more to fight against the COVID-19, many wage earners, disabled people, elderly people and beggars are facing the shortage of foods.

Concerning the problem faced by the poor, local governments across the country have started collecting data of such people of their locality mobilising its network.

The local governments have started to collect the data with a plan to provide relief package to the poor.

Many local governments have already collected the data of such people and some are planning to keep their record to provide foods.

Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration (MOFAGA) Wednesday instructed the local governments to keep the record of such people and the Municipalities Federation and Rural Municipalities Federation appealed to its all members to keep the records of such people.

MOFAGA asked the local levels to send record of workers working on daily wages in informal sector like brick kilns, Garment.

It also asked to send the record of disable people. However, many local bodies seem unaware about the instruction of the Ministry and those organisations.

Om Prakash Pokharel, ward chair of Bharatpur Metropolitancity-14, said it was collecting the data of poor people from Sunday and was planning to distribute relief package from today from ward levels.

The ward will distribute basic foods required for a week to such family, Pokharel added. But he said he had not received any instruction from the center till now.

As Pokharel, Pampha Basel, deputy mayor of Palungtaar Municipality, Gorkha, were unaware about the collection of the data of such poor people. Basel said her municipality did have the people of such categories.

Though Basel said so, Shankar Kandel, ward chair of Palungtaar-8, said he received an instruction letter from the Municipality Federation. “So, we have started collecting data from Monday."

Hom Narayan Shrestha, chairperson of the Rural Municipality Federation, said many rural municipalities have started keeping the rec. Shrestha said the federal government would announce some relief package to them.

If the federal government did not announce any relief, all local governments would provide the relief from its own source, Shrestha added.

Shrestha said the relief package must be similar in all local levels. Announcing and distributing relief according to own interest is totally wrong, Shrestha said.

Biswa Datta Gautam, joint-secretary at the MOFAGA,said as the high level committee of the government asked to keep records of such people he had asked the local bodies for the same, but the Ministry did not know more about relief package.