LPG import stalled at customs

By Sudeep Shrestha

KATHMANDU, April 15 - The consignment of Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) imported by Nepal has been lying at the Customs in border points for the past five days due to the confusion over taxes on the import.

According to the gas dealers, the confusion arose due to the recently announced Indian budget which has made significant changes in the customs duties.

The Indian budget, announced on April 1, removed excise duty in the exported goods and implemented Central Value Added Tax (Cen VAT). Prior to this, the Indian government used to give the excise duty it raised from Nepali importers to the government of Nepal. Because of this, Nepali importers were given special concessions on the Customs duty.

The Indian government earlier imposed eight percent customs duty on the import of LPG to Nepal. This has created confusion over whether or not to continue giving concession on the import of LPG.

The traders are demanding that the government clarify the provisions with the Indian government.

"The government has to do something about it immediately," says Ashok Singh, marketing manager of HP gas. According to him, although the delay in import of the LPG has not created shortage at present, the day is not far when the country would be hit with gas scarcity.

"There are 26 gas tankers at the Birgunj Customs which have been blocked," said Singh. Birgunj Customs is one of the main point for the exports and imports.

The traders are demanding that Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) should stand as a guarantor and release the tankers from the Customs. According to Yuvaraj Sharma, Executive Director of NOC, the corporation has already sent an official to the Birgunj Customs to release the tankers by keeping a collateral. "It has been decided to release the tankers on collateral. The tankers will be freed by tomorrow," said Sharma.

"The confusion over the concession has to be settled through bilateral talks by both the governments," he said. "Until the talks are settled we will pay the collateral equal in amount to the taxes and bring the tankers."

"If the decision to return the excise duty is reached later, the account will be settled with the traders accordingly. Otherwise the money will go as the revenue," said Sharma.

HP Gas’s Marketing Manager Singh told The Kathmandu Post that when he contacted the Indian officials at Indian Oil Corporation, they informed him that the new provision was just a change of name and that it would not make any difference to Nepal.

"However, our government has not taken any decision on this," said Singh.

The traders say that if the excise duty is not returned to them, then they will have to pay the eight percent of Customs duty which will ultimately lead to the rise of about 25 percent in the current LPG price.

However, they also add that since the chances of Nepal being affected by the new Indian system is very little the chances of the gas price going up is also "very low".

When questioned if the price of the gas was likely to go up, Executive Director Sharma said, "Since we have recently raised the price of kerosene and diesel, we do not intend to increase the price of the gas."

The traders fear that if the gas is kept for long at the Customs it might leak due to the rising temperature of terai. "One of the tankers had to be brought by paying the collateral since it was leaking," said Sharma.

NC cadres killed in Accham dist

By a Post Reporter

TIKAPUR, April 15 - The underground CPN (Maoists) guerrillas killed the Nepali Congress cadre Uday Bahadur Shahi in Kale Daanda VDC north-east of Accham on Thursday night.

Chief District Officer of Accham, Narayan Prasad Acharya told The Kathmandu Post that a group of 15-20 guerrillas attacked Shahi’s house at 11 p.m on Thursday and killed him.

The same group of Maoists also attacked NC’s youth wing Nepal Tarun Dal’s district member Uday Ram Jaisi and a local teacher Nayaram Bhat and injured them.

According to Acharya, Jaisi, who was taken to Nepalgunj for treatment while Bhat has died.

Kaale Daanda, which is around 54 kilometres away from the district headquarters, borders the Maoist affected district Kalikot.

Maoists had killed NC’s active cadre Tek Bahadur Shahi at the same place in the same house four months back.

PM seeks to mobilise army to end insurgency

By a Post Reporter

BIRATNAGAR, April 15 - Stressing that resolving the long-festering Maoist problem remains among his top three priorities, Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala today said he would laud Sher Bahadur Deuba if he resolves the insurgency.

"Maoist problem, corruption and good governance are my three objectives," Prime Minister said here while discussing current political problems.

"If the commission formed under Sher Bahadur Deuba solves the Maoist problem, I will honour him," said Koirala. Deuba, who chairs the high-powered Consensus Seeking Commission on Resolving Maoist Problem, last week said the new Prime Minister had asked him to hold talks with Maoists.

Koirala, who wants a greater participation of the army to help combat the insurgency, also pledged that he would lend the Deuba commission support through the National Defense Council that consists of Prime Minister, Defense Minister and Chief of Army Staff.

"Once the army is mobilized through the Defense Council, Nepalis will not have to worry about the Maoists," he said, making clear that he was keen to seek army’s help to combat the insurgency. "The army personnel are also Nepalis and they will fight to keep the Nepalis safe."

According to police officials, one reason police have suffered heavy casualties in their encounters with Maoists is because of their ill-preparedness to handle combat situations and inadequate ownership of arms and ammunition to fight insurgency.

Deuba has urged Koirala to publicly voice his support for him so that the Deuba commission enjoys a popular mandate in dealing with the Maoist problem.

Deuba maintains that dialogue is the only way out to resolve the five-year-old deadlock, pointing out that the insurgency has been bleeding the national economy.

Feeling the heat, literally

JAJARKOT, April 15 (PR)- With just two days into SLC examination students appearing for the same have felt the beating heat owing to the over crowded seating arrangements.

In all, 683 regular and 57 exempted students of the district are taking the exams that began Friday. While 10 students remained absent, an imprisoned candidate with the registration number 0640089 U took the exams from the cell itself.

However, the students in Jajarkot are compelled to take their examinations in overcrowded dingy rooms because of the security reasons.

"Earlier, the SLC Exams Coordination Committee had planned to conduct the exams at nine different centres, including Khalanga. But security concerns have resulted in cramming the students literally leaving no room for the bodily movement", said an invigilator.

"The chaos in the examination halls with at least four examinees on a single bench is mainly attributed to the failure in seat planning," told supervisor of Gyanodaya Campus Heramba Bahadur Shah.

Wild water buffaloes coming under threat

By Surendra Phuyal

KOSHI TAPPU WILDLIFE RESERVE, April 15 - Twenty four years have passed since the government declared this unique grassland a wildlife reserve to help protect Nepal’s last remaining herds of wild water buffaloes. But the large mammals continue to remain threatened.

Not much headway has been made to protect the endangered wild water buffaloes (bubalis bubalis) residing in more than a dozen small islands clustered together along the flood plains of mighty Koshi river, one of the main tributaries of the Ganges down in India. The reserve was established in 1976.

Though no official census has been done to date to find out the exact number of wild buffaloes surviving in this 175 sq km reserve, officials claim "nearly 200 wild buffaloes are surviving" in the grasslands and sissou forests of Koshi Tappu.

Whatever be the total number of wild buffaloes surviving in the small islands surrounded by Koshi water, the harsh reality is that domestic buffaloes -- and cows, if not bulls -- marauding the so-called protected nature reserve far outnumber the wild buffaloes.

(The primary difference between a wild and a domestic water buffalo, as senior ecologist at Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC) Narayan Poudel puts it, is that the wild one is a "pure buffalo" whereas the domestic variety is "improved" through cross-breeding. Their genetic make-ups and DNAs differ.)

The reserve’s Warden Jagannath Singh reckons the total number of domestic buffaloes co-existing with their wild brethren at between 5,000 to 7,000 (the estimated population also includes the cows living inside the reserve).

Locals say, herders from surrounding villages and from as far as India’s Bihar state have left their cattle to freak in the forests and grasslands of what is now Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve. The tradition dates back to olden times when most, if not the whole, of Nepal’s Terai was covered with lush green forests with plenty of wild buffaloes.

"Our (between 500-to-300) buffaloes live there," says an elderly Bharat Lal Yadav of Dhanpuri village pointing at the grasslands of the reserve from Pathri Ranger post in the western boundary of the reserve. "And our 100-plus-year-old father (Raghu Yadav) sneaked in there three days back to feed our cattle with salt. We are looking for him, waiting for him to come."

Yadav says his forefathers have been keeping hundreds and hundreds of buffaloes in the jungle for generations. An interesting feature of the Yadavs’ age-old buffalo keeping practice is that they do not rear them for milk.

"We keep them for hybrid arna calves," says Dev Narayan Badkher (Yadav), Raghu Yadav’s nephew. "Such hybrids are widely craved by buffalokeepers around the world. They love to buy such calves." Because the wild water buffaloes have co-existed with domesticated ones for a long time, ecologists fear, no "pure" wild water buffalo may have survived in the reserve.

"I don’t think there are any pure wild water buffaloes left," says Shankar Bista, a naturalist at nearby Koshi Tappu Wildlife Camp. "The freak domestic ones may have turned them hybrid...But it does not mean that the authorities should continue to remain inert."

It is not that the reserve officials have always remained inert. On one occasion last year, Bista recalls, the officials together with the army personnel deputed for the wildlife security went on a shooting frenzy killing the domestic cattle. And the move naturally irked the villagers and the move was abandoned amid a swirling controversy.

Warden Singh says talks are on with private parties to sell all the domestic cattle residing inside the reserve. "We did talk with a Hetauda-based party but the negotiations failed," he says. "But we will sell them as early as we can."

Yadavs who own the cattle demand that they be amply compensated. "We can’t stop the government from selling," says Badkher. "But the bottomline is we should be reasonably compensated."

Warden Singh has now been transferred to Chitwan.

YSEP hit among youth

BIRGUNJ, April 15 (PR)- Nine hundred youth from this central Terai district have submitted applications to receive training under the government’s Youth Self-Employment Programme.

The overwhelming number of applications from Parsa’s four election constituencies have shocked authorities here. The Programme, announced in the government’s Budget for the fiscal year 1999/2000, aims to train and later employ a maximum of 50 youth from each of the country’s 205 electoral constituencies.

Local youth attribute the popular tendency among Birgunj industrialists, who prefer workers from neighbouring India’s Bihar state to Nepalis, a factor leading to the unemployment problem in the country’s industrial district.

Dilip Man Singh Bhandari of Parsa Trade Union Congress claims that 50 percents of the workers employed at various industries in Parsa are Indians. "Even the so-called national industrialists here have opted for Indian workers," he says.

The advantages of employing Indians, he said, are many: The employers are neither required to recruit them on permanent basis, nor abide by Labour Act 2048 BS (1991).

Others, however, blame the lack of training or skill development programmes as the factor contributing to high unemployment. "We have many unemployed youths because we don’t have training institutes," says Umesh Chand Thakur of Birgunj Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Row picks up at KMC

By a Post Reporter

KATHMANDU, April 15 - The infighting in the Kathmandu Metropolitan City today led to the postponement of its 4th City Council Meeting by 15 days. This happened when the annual report on the current fiscal year for ward offices was delayed, according to Shanta Dhakal, a member of the City Council.

Yesterday KMC’s CPN-UML members gheraoed Mayor Keshav Sthapit who belongs to CPN-ML, demanding action against him for alleged corruption and irregularities. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Local Development Ram Chandra Poudel, who was slated to address the Council, had watched on as the two sides were involved in a war of words. They had to be separated by the police.

The annual budget, slated for 15 days ago, was submitted yesterday. Citing reasons for the "difficulties that may arise in reviewing" the report, newly elected Chairman of the City Council Bhagwan Thapa postponed the meeting today, according to Dhakal.

When the Council meet kicked off yesterday, the CPN-UML members shouted anti-Sthapit slogans asking for his resignation.

A visibly agitated Sthapit said he would "dump all those who have accused me of corruption in a garbage container as they are the ones who are really corrupt."

Spokesperson for CPN-UML Pradip Nepal had on April 8 gone on record accusing Sthapit of irregularities. Amid a special programme at Tundikhel Open Air Theatre, UML made public a list of names saying they were corrupt. Some of them have threatened to sue the party since, arguing that the party had defamed them without bothering to substantiate its claims.

Speaking after the protests had died down, DPM Poudel yesterday said he would do his best wipe out the alleged irregularities from the KMC. As the Local Development Minister, Poudel controls the local bodies.

He said he would meet both the CPN-ML Mayor and the CPN-UML Deputy Mayor over the matter. "I will seek transparency from them," he said.

Similar fracas broke out during the Council meet last year when the CPN-UML supporters shouted anti-Sthapit slogans.

One injured in casteist clash

LAMJUNG, April 15 (PR)- One person was injured and the other is missing subsequent to a brawl over the issue of untouchability in Chiti VDC here on Thursday.

The incident took place when people from "higher castes" objected to allow the dalits (people from oppressed community considered as "untouchables") to worship in the temple constructed by the Aama Samuha, a mothers group. This happened on Thursday during the inauguration of the Ram temple.

Buddhi Bahadur Sarki, 44, who was injured in the clash could speak only today. He is being treated at the Lamjung District Hospital. "Four of my neighbours hit me with sticks," said Sarki. "I don’t remember what happened next."

Sarki’s cousin Mahila Sarki, 22, who was also engaged in the brawl is still missing. "I don’t know whether they killed and threw him away or he ran away from fear," said Mahila’s father Loore Sarki. "Please get me my son."

Eyewitnesses say Mahila Sarki was leading the group of dalits that entered the temple demanding they be allowed to worship in the temple like the Kshatriyas and the Brahmins.