The Supreme Court has drawn the attention of government to adopt appropriate measures to increase productivity for preventing the country’s situation from going bad to worse in the wake of COVID-19.

The division bench of Justice Ishwor Prasad Khatiwada and Hari Prasad Phuyal on Thursday called for government’s attention towards increasing investment on sectors like production, education, health and employment among others since the outbreak of COVID-19 was likely to create an unfavorable circumstance.

The order reads, “The government should pay serious attention towards ensuring the optimum welfare of the public and their rights to education and health. Furthermore, the government should also be mindful about increasing productivity and protecting the media.”

Advocate Anantaraj Luitel and Pratibha Upreti had filed a writ petition at the highest court in the country, pleading to the State for increase in productivity, consideration for the waiver of bank loan, launch of appropriate agriculture programmes to protect the seeds of various foods.

The petitioners have also requested for issuing order to the government to arrange online teaching-learning activities for the students since all public activities had come to a grinding halt following the nationwide lockdown enforced by the government since March 24 to contain the outbreak of COVID-19.

In the order, the SC asked the government to submit a written response within 15 days via the Office of the Attorney General on whether the public (government) advertisement could be distributed to the media in an equal manner.