Nepal marking International Day of Older Persons on October 1

Kathmandu / Sept 28: Nepal is celebrating the 26th Internal Day of Older Persons on coming October 1 by organising various programmes for a week.

The theme for this year’s International Day of Older Persons is ‘ Take a Stand against Ageism”. This is set by the United Nations.

The latest statistics puts the number of older persons across the world at over 700 million and this is on the increasing graphs. The existing demographics of ageing makes up over 10 per cent of the total global census chart.

Nepal’s National Census-2011 puts the ageing population (above 60 years of age) at around 2.5 million that covers 8.13 per cent of the total population. More interesting fact is that Nepal’s present population growth rate is 1.4 per cent while the growth of ageing people is 3.4 per cent.

The government has formed a main celebration committee with the participation of representatives from various ministries and the National Senior Citizens Federation as well to make the celebrations successful.

Disseminations of media reports about the older persons, interaction programmes on the rights of aged people, radio and television programmes, best wishes messages from the President and the Prime Minister, public awareness programmes, and rally are among the part of the celebrations of the Day, according to Chhatra Bahadur Pradhan, Secretary General of the Federation.

The main celebrations will be held at Nepal Academy at 10:00 am on October 2.

At the call of the UN, October 1 every year is observed as the International Day of Older Persons since 1991 and Nepal has been marking the Day in collaboration with the Federation since 2007. RSS