Their Majesties in Dubai

KATHMANDU, June 30 (RSS) - His Majesty King Birendra reached Dubai of United Arab Emirates en route to London for regular medical check-up.

Her Majesty the Queen and His Royal Highness Prince Nirajan also reached Dubai along with His Majesty.

Earlier, His Majesty King Birendra left for Dubai in the United Arab Emirates this morning by a regular flight of Royal Nepal Airlines.

Their Majesties were bid farewell by Chairman of the Council of Royal Representatives Crown Prince Dipendra at the VVIP lounge of Tribhuvan International Airport. Also present on the occasion was Prince Gyanendra.

SLC results declared
Sumnima Singh of Banasthali on top

By a Post Reporter

KATHMANDU, July 1 -  This year’s School Leaving Certificate (SLC) examination results announced here today show a reduced pass percentage compared to last year’s results.

Of the 205,541 regular examinees who appeared in the April 14-21 secondary board examination, 19,836 candidates secured first division, 50,580 got second division and the number of third division candidates is 23,562, constituting a pass percentage of 45.72.

Last year, out of the total number of 139,202 candidates who took the exam, 68,488 (49.20 percent) examinees were declared successful.

The Office of the Controller of Examinations, Sano Thimi has re-introduced, for only the second time, the practice of declaring the names only first toppers in the girls’ and boys’ categories this year. In 1995 the practice of declaring top 10 board students were not followed.

Sumnima Singh, a girl student from Siddhartha Banasthali High School, Balaju has topped this year's results (see box). Jivan Poudel of the same school and Manoj Bohra of New Horizon Secondary School, Butwal were joint toppers in the boys’ category.

"The scramble for the top 10 positions has encouraged unhealthy competitions among the schools," Controller of Examination Dr Sahadev Bhatt told The Kathmandu Post, "so we decided to do away with this practice."

Dr Bhatt added, " The schools would advertise their names, saying they had achieved board honours and increase fees arbitrarily.This new system (of a topper in each category) would discourage this."

Likewise, of the 32,082 students in the Exempted Group, first division candidates are 26, in the second division are 2,558 and in the third division are 4,747 examinees, constituting 22.85 percent of successful candidates.

SLC Toppers 2000

Pre-historic tools, documents found in Upper Arun area

By a Post Reporter

KATHMANDU, June 30 - A team of Nepali researchers has found hundreds of historical documents related to "China-Nepal border controversy" and thousands of years old pre-historic arrow-heads in Upper Arun area in northern Sankhuwasabha district recently.

Dr Ramesh Kumar Dhungel, a researcher at Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies (CNAS), Friday said at a gathering of intellectuals here that " the historical documents prove that Nepal officially lost two of its trans-Himalayan villages--Lungdek and Chyanga settlements--after demarcation of the border in 1962".

During the preliminary stage of his cultural and historical survey of Upper Arun and Upper Holang area, which is still going on, Dr Dhungel said he found hundreds of important "historical documents about Nepal-China border controversy."

"Two of them--a Lal Mohar of 1814, and another letter of 1927, both send by the then Nepal government--ask local chiefs `why they could not collect tax from the locals of Lungdek and Chyanga settlements’...This shows that the settlements were in the Nepali territory up until 1962," he said.

He added that the Nepali head of the 1962 Joint China-Nepal Team, Arabinda Shamsher, could have been unaware of the fact that the two settlements belonged to Nepal. "Today, the settlements lie on the other side of the China-Nepal border - Tibetan Autonomous Region."

Dr Dhungel said that he found the 1814 Lal Mohar with a descendent of the then chief (Ghowa) of Chemdang village, and the 1927 letter with one Lama Denchha of Kima Thanka Monastery in Hatil village. "They, however, refused to give me the documents," he added.

Likewise, the pre-historic artefacts include three arrow-heads, with length of between 3.7 cm to 2.4 cm and breadth between 2.8 to 1.5 cm. ‘Typological dating’, the method he applied to confirm how old the stone-weapons were, showed the stone weapons to be over 7,000 years old (made sometimes in 6,000 BC).

Dr Dhungel and his aides, Sung Jyok, Posunga Bhote and Pon-Duk Pejyawa Bhote, found them in a cave in Hatia village’s Tatopani area in the early hours of 15 May "near a natural hot water spring, where we had gone to take bath".

"This is the first time in Nepal, if not in the entire eastern Himalayan region, that we have found such arrow-heads dating back to the Stone Age," Dr Dhungel said. "Previously, such weapons were found in Europe, Central Asia, Eastern Siberia and other places."

In Europe, such weapons - skilfully carved from stones, also called Microlith, were used during Mesolithic era, according to experts involved in pre-historic studies. Such weapons were first invented some 12,000 years back.

"This shows that the stone weapons were used by pre-historic men in Central Asia and the Himalayan region between 5,000 to 7,000 BC," Dr Dhungel said. "We suppose that the weapons were made by the early men before the start of `cultivation and housing era’ or `copper or metal era’."

PAC to settle compensation deal

By a Post Reporter

KATHMANDU, June 30 - The parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) investigating the alleged financial irregularities in the second phase of Mahakali Irrigation Project today decided to settle the matter on Thursday.

The decision was taken after Secretary at the Ministry of Water Resources (MoWR) Bishwonath Sapkota failed to furnish details of the decision to the committee. The committee has asked him to be present with more documents and details about the decision when the committee meets next week.

PAC is probing the proposal that sought Rs. 77.3 million from the government to pay as compensation to the Korean contractor Koneco Pvt. Ltd. over three years after the completion of the Mahakali Irrigation Project. The committee has also ordered the government not to render the amount until it gives a decision over the matter.

Secretary Sapkota said that the Ministry had been asking the Finance Ministry to provide the amount which, however, has not been provided by the latter.

The company, presenting a 20-point claim sheet, had asked for Rs. 143.3 million as compensation on the project that began in 1995 with a grant loan from World Bank with the cost of Rs. 645 million.

The company had written to International Court of Arbitrator making the claim over three years after the irrigation project had been completed. "Since the process through the court would cost us about Rs. 20 million and if we lost the case we would have ended up paying the full Rs. 143.3 million so we thought it would be wiser to pay the Rs. 77.3 million in compensation they had agreed to," said Sapkota.

Sources at the Ministry say that this was just a ploy to swindle nearly Rs. 80 million from the state coffer and that the contractor and the officials have already struck an inside deal to share the amount.

The recommendation to pay the compensation was first made by the then Minister for Water Resources Govind Raj Joshi.

After the present government led by Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala assumed office, Joshi’s successor Khum Bahadur Khadka again took the proposal to the cabinet which was endorsed in early May.

Secretary Sapkota today said that he would provide full details in the PAC meeting scheduled to be held on Thursday.

NC CWC to probe membership dispute

By a Post Reporter

KATHMANDU, June 30 - The long-running meeting of the Nepali Congress (NC) Central Working Committee (CWC) today finally ended with the decision to further investigate into the alleged irregularity in the renewal and distribution procedure of active membership and report in the next meeting.

Prime Minister and party president Girija Prasad Koirala today asked the committee to investigate into the issue of active members and present the full details in the next meeting after there were accusations that the renewal and distribution procedure was "discriminatory".

Some members of the CWC have been alleging that a faction of the party members adopted a biased strategy to influence the upcoming National Convention of the party.

CWC members, close to the former Prime Minister Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, alleged that the party general secretary was repeatedly dissolving the party’s district committees "unconstitutionally" just prior to the National Convention.

According to a member of the CWC, the committee is scheduled to meet next month.

Currently, NC has 130,000 active members who chose the leaders for the party. The National Convention of the party is scheduled for the second week of November.

The CWC meeting which started on June 20 with the aim to decide on a strategy to approach the Maoist rebels for dialogue. The CWC has asked the government to initiate dialogue with Maoists and to begin consultation with all other political parties which can be "result-oriented and effective".

The meeting has decided to grant the election tickets in the coming general election according to the roles the lawmakers and ministers play in the parliamentary system.

According to the spokesperson of the party, Narahari Acharya, the party has decided to evaluate the ministers’ and MPs’ activities and submit a report to the party every week.

The party has set up a committee under CWC member KB Gurung that would decide on the lawmakers code of conduct and another committee under general secretary Sushil Koirala which will submit proposals to amend the party’s constitution.

There had been demands that the party constitution be amended to bar the party president from appointing majority of its members. Yesterday Narahari Acharya had demanded that the provision be amended so that 75 percent of its members should come elected. The 31-member CWC at present has only five elected members and all the rest are nominated by the party president.

Govt’s 100 days : Much remains to be done 

By Pradeep Silwal

KATHMANDU, June 30 - As the government of Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala passes the psychological milestone of 100 days in power, it is time to take stock of his achievements, or lack thereof.

The first things that come to mind is Koirala’s promises when he assumed power in March after ousting his predecessor K P Bhattarai through an internal coup in the ruling Nepali Congress party.

Koirala, to be precise, had promised three things: improving the law and order situation, controlling widespread corruption and revamping the bloated administration.

The government has made some measure of progress on the last count. Implementation of the recommendations of Administrative Reforms Commission and reducing the number of ministries from 26 to 21 can be taken as an example of efforts to streamline slow and bulky government machinery.

One would have hoped that the streamlining of a bulky administration would have been matched by a corresponding cut in administrative spending, the non-productive part of the economy. But that is not so. Administrative spending has jumped from Rs 4.72 billion last year to Rs 5.25 billion this year, as was unveiled in the recent budget. Not all of that is wasteful, but the spending part is still bloated even though the actual number of government ministries has been reduced.

Koirala also decided to stop the tradition of political appointments in government corporations. That shows commitment to reforms, but that has lately been diluted with the appointment of a political operative as chief of the public sector drinking water corporation.

While there may be a semblance of achievement on the administrative reforms front, on the other two promises, the 76 year-old prime minister has failed utterly. And, at least in the case of law and order promise, tragically so.

During the waning days of the Bhattarai government, the high level committee to resolve the Maoist problem headed by his protege Sher Bahadur Deuba was on the verge of talks with the rebels.

Koirala, who did not leave a chance to blast the deteriorating law and order situation at the time, began his move to oust Bhattarai just at about that time. The result was the government-Maoist talks got derailed. It took Deuba three months to build same level of "environment" for the talks, but in that time, more than four dozen lives were lost.

Had Koirala waited until the talks were begun with the rebels before ousting Bhattarai, the deaths in incidents like Paanchkatiya earlier this month when 25 lives were lost, could probably have been avoided. But then, they probably would have occurred anyway. That still provides ample ammunition for those who are intent on showing Koirala’s failure.

Add to that the general perception of increasing violence and death, and Koirala’s promise on this count is far from realized.

The prime minister’s ambiguous statements on the Maoists also add to the confusion. Sometimes he’s all for talks, at other times he sends the opposite signal - like when he raised a ruckus over the National Defense Council, ostensibly in preparation to mobilize the army against the rebels.

Coming now to corruption, the prime minister made a famous remark some weeks ago when he said that he would remove any official or minister "within minutes" if they were found to be corrupt. He has yet to deliver on it, though there are numerous opportunities where he could have intervened.

The ongoing aircraft leasing controversy in RNAC is one. Some months ago, when the then executive chairman of RNAC extended the lease on a China South West Airlines, he was promptly sacked and an investigation launched. When the current chairman, an appointee of the Koirala government, made a similar lease extension within just 24 hours, the government is muted.

That should not, however, distract from some progress, specially in the government’s intention to provide more teeth to the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA). It recently withdrew a toothless bill to add a clause that will empower CIAA to seize property disproportionate to the earnings of persons holding public authority.

This is a good move but strong laws alone cannot fight corruption. And again, the body that it aims to empower is currently headless without a chief commissioner whose appointment Koirala has deferred for months.

20,000 IDUs in Nepal Second highest in Asia

By a Post Reporter

KATHMANDU, June 30 - There are 20,000 intravenous drug users (IDUs) in Nepal, which is the second highest figure in Asia after India, of which about 15,000 are in Kathmandu valley alone, said health experts here today.

Presenting a paper on ‘Dissemination Workshop on the Need Assessment of IDUs’ organized by Youth Power Nepal (YPN) and supported by Save the Children US (SC/US), the director of National Centre for AIDS and STD Control (NCASC) Dr. T. N. Jha said, "There are almost 50,000 drug abusers in Nepal of which 40.4 percent of total IDUs are infected with HIV positive."

"Intravenous drug use has played a critical role in fuelling HIV epidemic in the past six years. The percentage of HIV infected IDUs was only 1.6 in 1994," Jha further said, adding "IDUs are more prone to HIV infection because they directly exchange syringe and needle among their peer group."

"It is estimated that there are 10,000 HIV positive drug abusers all over Nepal, a majority of whom share needles. 65 percent of them share needles without hesitation due to lack of money," he said.

The findings of the Paper point out that drug addicts think that spending money to buy one more syringe is just a waste because they like to spend money to get more drug so that everyone can have a sufficient dose. This leads them to share the only syringe by everyone in the group.

According to the projections of Prerana, an NGO working with the victims of HIV/AIDS, if the increasing trend of HIV positive and drug abusers is not checked immediately, there will be at least one (in average) HIV positive in each household in two years.

Presenting a paper, President of YPN Rishi Raj Ojha said the total money spent by IDUs alone in Nepal is more than Rs 1.3 billion whereas money spent by non-IDUs is more than Rs 3.2 billion each year. There is absolute lack of coordination between Home Ministry and Ministry of Health on how to tackle the problem of drug abuse, he said.

YPN had previously done need assessment among 24 drug abusers from different parts of the country. It came to the conclusion that their needs are - free treatment, education and counselling, methadone treatment, employment, adequate availability of syringe to control HIV infection, police help in syringe exchange programme, cooperation and affection from family and society, check-up in public hospitals.

Methadone treatment process is that, the abuser is provided with lesser drug at a time, so that he can quit his habit in future. In syringe exchange programme, abusers are provided with new syringes so that they may not be compelled to share a syringe.

Addressing the programme, Minister for Health Dr. Ram Baran Yadav pointed out the lack of coordination between private and governmental bodies.

Striking workers teargassed

By a Post Reporter

BIRATNAGAR, June 30 - Police last night fired 17-rounds of rubber bullets and 14 shells of teargas to disperse the workers of Biratnagar Jute Mill who had been blocking Jogbani border post for the last three days, police said. The border has opened from last night.

Fifteen police personnel and seven employees were injured in the clash that took place between the striking mill workers and the policemen, according to S P Kalyan Kumar Timalsina. "Police used force after the labourers threw brickbats at us," he said.

The employees of Biratnagar Jute Mill had closed the border since Tuesday when their demands were not fulfilled by the mill lease-holder, Nirmal Kumar Vyas.

Due to the closure, hundreds of cargo trucks from Nepal and India got stuck. The trade mobility came to a standstill and the customs duty recorded a drop of Rs 10 million, according to Rani Customs Office, Biratnagar.

On May 29 the employees had resorted to agitation with 16-point demands protesting Vyas’ decision to run the factory in accordance with the Labour Act, which would have curtailed some of their facilities.

After the breakdown of talks between representatives of Ministry of Industry and Commerce, present lease holder and the employees on Thursday, the police asked the employees to lift the border siege. But instead the employees hurled stones at the police personnel and 50 trucks lined at the Nepali side of the border.

However, Dhamananda Sanjel, the co-ordinator of the on-going Employees Movement, said the police attempted to supress the agitation and injured more than 50 employees during the clash.

Sanjel said the agitation would continue and threatened to obstruct traffic and Rani Bazaar of Jogbani.

Open University by next year 

By a Post Reporter

KATHMANDU, June 30 - Nepal will have Open University by the end of the Ninth Five Year Plan which is currently running in its fourth year, a National Planning Commission (NPC) member said here today.

Speaking at an interaction programme organized today by Education Task Force, Ministry of Education and Sports, NPC member Nirmal Pandey said the government was contemplating opening the university.

"We are still in conceptualisation phase," he said. "And we want the Open University to start within two years...This type of university is for everyone who feels like learning."

Centres for a form of non-formal education, the open universities have already been opened in most of the developed countries and some parts of South Asia. Maldives, Bhutan and Nepal are the only countries in the region where such universities do not exist.

The Ninth Five Year Plan of the government of Nepal has so far prioritized Open University. Also called ‘university without wall’, an open university includes, among other educational facilities, interactive sessions often arranged at the students’ convenience.

According to the members of the Task Force, which was formed last year to draft a Bill required to open an Open University, a preliminary structure of the university and the draft bill have already been prepared. According to the plan, altogether 15 centres and more sub-centres will be opened all the five developmental regions in the country.

Chairman of the Task Force, Dr Tirtha Raj Khaniya said, "There is no such thing as a proto-type of an Open University, so we need to build our own model suited to our circumstances. With efficient and strong leadership, the implementation aspect, one of the major hurdles, can be crossed."

Educationist Govinda Raj Bhattarai stressed on the need to set up a special task force for the establishment of Open University that can determine the target group and design the curriculum accordingly.

Another expert and a doctorate student of a Denmark-based open university, Lava Dev Awasti called on the need to bring about a drastic change in conventional teaching style of Nepali universities. "Unless there is change in teaching style, such universities cannot succeed," he said.

In a situation where the government job is saturated and private sectors not interested in hiring just degree holders, it has become a challenge for education sector to meet the rapid changing needs of the market, said Suresh Raj Sharma, Vice-Chancellor of Kathmandu University.

Establishing an Open University is an alternative to give affiliation to colleges, he said.

Trailokya Nath Uprety, an educationist, suggested that the Bill be tabled in the parliament only after proper exercise." In a certificate cultured society of ours, where one’s ability is measured in terms of just grabbing a certificate, only establishing the university will do no good unless it enhances one’s knowledge on the subject, Uprety added.