Employees of BP Koirala Institute of Health and Sciences in Dharan are up in arms. The agitating staff padlocked the offices of all four officials and matron today. The agitating staff padlocked the offices of Vice-chancellor Gyanendra Giri, Rector Guru Prasad Khanal, Registrar Mohanchandra Regmi, Director Gauri Shankar Shah, and Matron Gayatri Rai today demanding that the risk allowance be entitled to every employee who served during the COVID crisis. They also demanded transparency and equitable distribution of the risk allowance and payment of the increased salary.

Upon being prevented from entering the VC's office by the security personnel who were deployed outside, angry staff padlocked the main gate itself. "Besides our main demand regarding the fair and equitable distribution of the risk allowance, there are other demands too. We had submitted a memorandum to the management by incorporating all the demands for more than a week, but as no initiative was taken towards addressing our demands, we had no option but to stage agitation," said Rajan Koirala, who is the coordinator of an ad-hoc committee that was formed to get their demands addressed.

According to the committee vice-chair Kiran Pokhrel, low-level staffers haven't yet received COVID risk allowance even though the ministry had pledged to provide it long ago. "Apart from that, there are staffers who have been working in the same position for a long period of time, but some of them haven't had any promotion for quite long," Pokhrel said.

Attempts to know about the staff's agitation from VC Giri and Registrar Regmi was not possible as they couldn't be reached on the phone.