The Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) has called on all to fully follow the lockdown order the government has announced in view of the COVID-19 risk.

It has also appealed that only the genuine helpless, destitute and needy workers to claim for the relief, citing that even people who can afford daily essentials were also found taking the relief materials meant for the utterly needy people.

KMC has started distributing relief to the needy people and families since Wednesday to alleviate the difficulty these people and families are facing during the lockdown.

Issuing an appeal on Thursday, the KMC Mayor Bidya Sundar Shakya said some sporadic acts of defiance of the two-week lockdown declared by the government have been reported. In this context, he urged the people to strictly abide by the lockdown orders.

Mayor Shakya also informed that the metropolis has started distributing relief to the helpless people who do not have anybody to look after them, to the people without any means of income or inherited property, those sheltered at old-age home, protection homes, temples, monasteries and mosques, people without any permanent source of income and those who have hand-to-mouth existence within the metropolis.

KMC has earnestly requested the people and families except those falling in the above categories not to take the relief that it is providing only to the utterly needy ones.