Aid worker helps free 2,000 Nepalese slave girls

AN Irish aid worker has played a leading role in freeing almost 2,000 girls kept in bonded labour, a form of slavery still widely practiced in parts of Nepal.

Donal Keane, originally from Mitchelstown, Co Cork, was in London this week to be saluted by Plan, the organisation he has worked with for the past 25 years.

With him to collect the Global Plan Award was 17-year-old Bishnu, who was sent to work as a servant girl by her impoverished parents five years ago when Plan launched its rescue project.