A wide-body plane is going to China on Wednesday to bring medical supplies procured by the Nepal Army (NA) from China.
NA Spokesperson Bigyan Dev Pandey told Setopati that the plane will go to Guangzhou to bring the materials gathered there. "A wide-body plane will go to China in the evening. It will return with medical supplies from Guangzhou tomorrow," he stated. "We plan to bring 28.66 tons of materials this time."
He revealed that this will be the last flight bringing materials procured by the NA from China.
The NA had planned to bring 47.5 tons of the 341 tons of materials it procured from China by air and the rest by land. It has already brought 18.84 tons in a wide-body plane on May 19.
Pandey added that materials are transported in volume by land and the total quantity to be brought by land accordingly was 2,662 cubic meters. "1,200 cubic meters out of that has already arrived," he stated. "Five trucks have already left Tatopani border point while more trucks are arriving in Khasa."
The NA has 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.
