THE GURKHA Welfare Trust in Salisbury will be visited by a prominent Nepali dignitary on Monday.
The Gurkha Welfare Trust says it will be "honoured" to receive the visit to Salisbury of Harka Raj Sampang Rai, Mayor of Dharan, a city in eastern Nepal.
Mayor Sampang Rai is currently in the UK attending a busy programme of fundraising engagements in support of his chosen charities.
Harka is keen to learn more about how the Trust fundraises for their work supporting Gurkhas across Nepal and to thank the charity for their support of a vital project to supply clean water to Dharan, which was completed last year.
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To help provide vital water to Dharan’s citizens, The Gurkha Welfare Trust funded a one-off programme to increase the city’s existing capacity by four million litres per day.
At the handover ceremony The Gurkha Welfare Trust CEO Al Howard said: “The Gurkha Welfare Trust does not usually provide community aid in urban areas. Our aid is usually targeted at the remote communities of Nepal.
"However, in the case of Dharan, of the 173,000 residents here, 3,400 of them are Gurkha veterans. I am proud to say that this project will have a positive impact in the lives of the residents of Dharan.”
The project took just under five months to complete, concluding in July 2023 after a team from the Trust established three new stream intakes and four collection chambers, installed one roughing sand filter, built a retaining wall and installed 2,350 metres of pipeline.
Harka Raj Sampang Rai has been Mayor of Dharan since 2022, after a contest that saw him upset the status-quo ended with him being elected as an independent candidate.
The politician has been attacked repeatedly by the ruling parties in the Himalayan country after he campaigned on the back of voter-malaise and anticorruption.
In June 2023 he succeeded in bringing water to Dharan with a 98-day volunteer labour campaign, which saw more than 5,000 people volunteer every Saturday and public holiday.
On his election to office in 2022, Sampang Raj said: "The people of Dharan do not have many expectations. They have simple wants and needs - they want the local government to listen to their problems and resolve them. I will do that."
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The Gurkhas are soldiers from Nepal who are recruited into the British Army, as well as the Indian Army and have done so for centuries.
They have a fearsome reputation as some of the greatest soldiers in the world; symbolised by their iconic knife: the Kukri.
In the course of the service to the British Crown, Gurkhas have been awarded 13 Victoria Crosses.
The Gurkha Welfare Trust provides vital support to Gurkha veterans, their families and communities in Nepal.
They enable people to live with dignity by delivering essential financial and medical aid and work with local communities to provide access to clean water and education.
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