The medical supplies procured by the Nepal Army (NA) from China will first be brought by land instead of air.
NA Spokesperson Bigyan Dev Pandey told Setopati that one container has already left Guangzhou on Monday with 110 cubic meters of materials and the other with 150 cubic meters will leave today.
The containers will arrive in Kathmandu in 10 days of leaving Guangzhou at most. He said it may take a week to bring materials that has to be brought by air. "There were five days of public holiday in China. It finished only on Wednesday. It may take time if the customs process takes 72 hours," he explained. "There are many who are waiting for turn at the airport. It may take a week if we cannot make arrangements there. But we have used diplomatic and other channels to ask them to not take time for customs process and the turn at airport."
Planes can be sent to Guangzhou Thursday or Friday if the process were expedited. The NA has already asked for two wide-body planes of Nepal Airlines Corporation for that. It is trying to bring the materials in at least one plane as early as possible.
The two wide-body planes can bring up to 37 tons.
The NA has already signed an agreement worth US$ 18,441,706 (around Rs 2.25 billion) with the Sinopharm Group, owned by the Chinese government, to procure 341 tons of medical supplies.
The government on April 1 had unilaterally revoked the contract with Omni Group, that had brought the first lot of medical materials from China three days earlier, citing the latter's inability to bring additional materials. Omni Group, with no previous experience in medical supplies, was given the contract without any bidding process in a process that lacked transparency.
It then decided to hand over the responsibility of bringing the materials to the Nepal Army through government to government arrangements.
