Foreign loans reach Rs 194.37 billion

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KATHMANDU, Sept 30 - The total foreign loans drawn by the country has reached a whopping Rs. 194.37 billion and with no auditing of such amount there are widespread misuse and irregularities of this money, the Auditor General said Sunday.

"It is a serious matter that there are no records of how much aid and loans are brought into the country. We have repeatedly demanded with the government to come up with a mechanism to keep track of these amount to avoid irregularities and misuse of funds but this has not happened," Auditor General Bishnu Bahadur K.C. told The Kathmandu Post.

K.C. had presented the annual report of the Auditor General’s Office on Friday at the House of Representatives that details the financial activities of the government during the past fiscal year. The report had been delayed due to the June 1 Royal Palace massacre.

"There is no integrated record of how much in grants the country has received so far from various donor agencies and nations. These amounts and the spendings are not within the budget so these amounts are not audited," said the report adding that without a national strategy on foreign grants in place, there is a situation of confusion.

The report also says that another reason for this state is including the grant aid amount in the fiscal budget without the government reaching agreements with the donors. Such amount if not received would later create shortage in the budget.

There are many cases where the donors who have pledged for these loans or aid have not been paid out and the money spent by the government and it has not been recovered.The loan part has totalled Rs. 4.59 billion and the grant aid is Rs. 1.94 billion.

The trend of misusing foreign aid and loan is on the rise and worse, there is no record of how the devaluation of the Nepalese rupees against the dollars has added to the burden, said the report.

The report says that the devaluation of the currency has increased loan burden by additional 10.44 percent just in the past one year.

A chunk of the money is being misused in extra expenditures like unnecessary trip to foreign destinations for training and seminars. "The reason and objectives of these trips are not stated thus misusing the resources for these unnecessary events," the report states

The report also says that the failure to recover the estimated revenue projected in the fiscal budget is a serious matter. This amount totalled to Rs. 17.36 billion this year, which is 300 percent increase in the past four years.

"This is even more serious than the amounts like unsettled amounts and advance amount that also runs into billions of rupees," K.C. said.

The amount totalling the unrecovered revenue, unsettled amounts, advances by the government offices, foreign grant and loan yet to be received and taxes have totalled to Rs. 55.87 billion for the government and another Rs. 15.82 billion for other government agencies totalling a whopping Rs. 71.7 billion, the report said.

Regional air routes unutilised, findings show

By Damakant Jayshi

KATHMANDU, Sept 30 – RNAC bosses are putting forth a new argument to derail the government’s bid to provide licenses to three additional private airlines to operate on some international routes: that such sectors are already overcrowded and any additional airlines would only be fighting for a cut from a shrinking pie.

But experts opine the argument falls flat on several grounds. The first and foremost is that the national carrier has not been able to adequately service even those meagre routes it flies to. Second, if anything needs sharing, then it is the dozens of regional routes that have been left unserviced by RNAC for the lack of aircraft and marketing plan.

This debate comes at a time when the government is on the verge of providing licenses to three private airlines to operate on regional routes. But RNAC bosses, citing the RNAC Act, 1962 have put their foot down saying the national carrier was not consulted in the early stages of the plan as it should have been.

K B Poudyal, the acting Corporate Director at RNAC, denies that the carrier is blocking the move to allow private airlines to share the regional and international routes. "RNAC is owned by the government. So how can we object to its open sky policy?" he said.

But many officials do not hide their contempt for the government plan as well as for the private airlines. "We have seen the private airlines in the past. We are not afraid of the competition. Simply by leasing an aircraft or two, one doesn’t become an airline as is the case in Nepal," a top RNAC official quipped.

Despite the scathing criticism flowing in from RNAC bigwigs, officials at the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation do not need much convincing that RNAC has been a poor regional operator, both in terms of quality and the number of routes it operates. However, it is the RNAC Act that has made things difficult for them.

The much-talked about Act, in fact, does not allow any other airlines except RNAC to operate in Nepal. Clause 15 (1) of Chapter 3 of the RNAC Act of 1962 says that no one would be allowed to operate air service to ferry passengers from Nepal to abroad and back and within the Kingdom itself except the RNAC or its subsidiary.

However, Clause 15 (1a) says that the government can allow an individual or a foreign government to operate to and from and within the Kingdom "until the Corporation becomes capable of providing the air service".

Captain R P Pradhan, Chairman of Cosmic Air, pointed out just this very provision. "The Corporation is not able to give the service but it is objecting to other airlines which want and are capable of providing a better service."

While RNAC never objected to international airlines that fly in the same routes that RNAC does, it has no business objecting to the latest open sky policy of the government. "Why single out the domestic airlines?" he asked.

So far, Necon Air is the only private airlines operating in the regional sector, Patna and Varanasi in India. Col. Narayan Singh Pun (Retd.), Nepali Congress lawmaker and now also the Chairman of Necon Air says his airline is now looking forward to other domestic operators breaking out on international routes.

Experts say, that there is an abundance of air seats lying around waiting to be tapped, either by RNAC or another carrier. And since RNAC does not have the aircraft, the marketing means, nor the zeal to develop those routes into profitable ones, those routes should which today are underserviced or not serviced at all should be open to private carriers, they say.

Nepal today has bilateral air service agreements with 31 countries, most of whom are in Asia. As "bilaterals" have it, each country is allowed to nominate particular carrier/s to service the routes opened up by the agreement.

As an example, after "bilaterals" were signed by Nepal and India which gives both sides 6000 air seats a week each between the two countries, the latter has denoted Indian Airlines as the carrier to fly to Kathmandu. Nepal has denoted RNAC, and for the last two years, private airline Necon Air, to share its 6000 air seats.

While most of the air seats are already being utilised in the case with India, Nepal still sits on the other air seats provided by other "bilaterals." For instance, PIA, the Pakistani carrier flies to Nepal, but RNAC does not fly a reciprocal flight there. So is the case with Bangladesh and Bhutan. In other cases, though "bilaterals" have been signed between two countries, the routes are left unserviced by both, as with Myanmar, Sri Lanka and the Maldives.

Narendra Bajracharya, the President of Hotel Association Nepal, flays RNAC’s objection and has welcomed the government initiative. "It’s a welcome move, though a belated one." Bajracharya says that the tourism industry has had to pay a heavy price for inefficiency of the royal carrier, which recently suspended flights to the European and Singapore sectors.

Birendra Bahadur Basnet, Managing Director of Buddha Air, argues that the new liberal market economy will give the air service a competitive edge. He said that within eight months of receiving the Air Operating Certificate (AOC), Nepal International Airlines would be able to begin its service.

Private operators argue that the private airlines must not be compared with the RNAC, "infamous" for its sloppy services. They maintain that the market is not limited to the current availability, adding that the optimal potential is yet to be tapped.

Private airlines, at the discomfort of the RNAC, are now eyeing not only the lucrative Indian sector where thousands of seats remain unutilised, but also other sectors that RNAC has failed to cater so far. Airlines like Nepal International Airlines (linked with Buddha Air), Cosmic Air and Shangrila Air are eyeing not only the routes in which the RNAC is operating but also in those where there is a complete blank. Nepal International Airlines plans to operate to and from Myanmar, Cosmic Air plans to do the same for Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Locals damage over hundred  vehicles in Dang

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LAMAHI(Dang), Sept 30 - Locals of Tulsipur vandalised more than 150 public vehicles in the Tulsipur Bus Park a day after a speeding passenger bus ran over a man and his nephew near Motipur village on Saturday.

According to Deputy Superintendent Ram Bahadur Basnet, thousands of agitated locals and the school children torched the bus ticket counter and ravaged more than 150 buses parked on the garage.

Thousands of locals and the students staged protest rally demanding death sentence to the bus driver Jaya Lal Rana and blocked the highway for more than 36 hours. As a result of the accident, the entire Tulsipur market remained tense throughout the day, said SP Basnet.

Meanwhile, the post-mortem of the deceased could not be performed as none of the relatives came to claim the body, said Bikash Devkota, Medical Officer of Mahendra Hospital, Dang.

Narendra Bahadur Bali, 16, of Tulsipur and Gokarna Thapa, 14, of Salyan were killed on the spot after a passenger bus with the registration number Ra1 Kha 24 knocked them down on the highway, about two kilometres from the Tulsipur Municipality on Saturday.

‘Lawmakers fail to understand SC ruling’

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KATHMANDU, Sept 30 - In the continued tussle between the legislature and the judiciary, a Supreme Court Justice today accused the lawmakers of failing to understand the apex court’s ruling.

"The whole tussle between the Supreme Court and the House of Representatives began with the misunderstanding and the misinterpretation of the Court’s ruling," said Justice Laxman Aryal.

Lawmakers have been criticising the Supreme Court for its decision last week to scrap the Constituency Development Programme Implementation Procedure.

The parliamentarians were getting Rs. 1 million each from the government "to implement development projects" in their respective constituencies. The Lower House of parliament had appropriated Rs. 265 million for the same purposes through the Appropriation Bill.

"The Court will pass the written judgement as early as Monday or Tuesday. We were only saying that there should be law that governs the spending. A public money spending Act would make such expenditure more transparent," Aryal said.

"This is signs of executive dictatorial. The spending should be within a specified law or the financial regulations," he said.

Following the Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday, lawmakers had alleged the judges of incompetency and claimed that since money allocated were part of The Appropriation Bill adopted by parliament, it was within the existing laws.

Some MPs had even said these judges should be declared incapable and then impeached and removed by the House.

The Supreme Court had issued a directive order to the government to implement the programme through a proper Act instead of implementing through the present procedure.

The court also ordered that the Constituency Development Programme Implementation Procedure is not a law and members of parliament can receive such money only after making a proper law.

Aryal was speaking at a programme organized by the Nepal Democratic Association on a debate over whether the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) should be able to investigate on the Supreme Court and other judges including the Chief Justice on charges of corruption.

A Bill proposing second amendment to the CIAA Act is being discussed at the parliamentary State Affairs Committee which has initially agreed that judges should also be considered figures holding public offices and within the jurisdiction of CIAA.

As expected, the Supreme Court judges are against the proposal.

"Under no circumstances should the Supreme Court be put under the jurisdiction of the CIAA. CIAA is an investigating body like the police and if Supreme Court is put under it then the apex court will not be Supreme any more," Aryal argued. "Not even under the Panchayat rule such an attempt had been made."

Aryal said that the judges are not seeking concession to be corrupt but even under the present laws the judges are not immune to charges of corruption. "We should be concentrating on improving the present laws and amending it if necessary but the spirit of independent judiciary should not be crushed," Aryal said.

Former House Speaker and Senior Advocate Daman Nath Dhungana said this was the last chance for the judiciary to correct their flaws. He said the mode of the Judiciary Council should be improved and the Courts need to change its functioning.

"No one including the Chief Justice enjoys immunity when it comes to corruption charges," said Constitution expert Mukund Regmi adding there was not need to make changes in the present Constitution. Regmi suggested that there should be a committee formed with the House that will initiate impeachment procedure and then file cases against the judges charged with corruption.

Man kills family, commits suicide

BIRATNAGAR, Sept 30 (PR) - A "mentally-retarded" man hacked his five family members, including a five-year-old child, to death before committing suicide at remote Buipa Village Development Committee-9 of the hill district of Khotang, police here said Sunday. The VDC is located about 20 km away from the district headquarters of Diktel.

According to Madhav Basnet, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) in the District Police Office in Khotang, Nanda Bahadur Rai, 47, committed suicide by hanging himself on a tree about 300 metres away from his house after killing his wife, three daughters and a son with a khukuri early on Sunday. All of them were fast asleep when he hacked them to death.

Those who were hacked to death have been identified as Rai’s wife Dhanahira, 37, daughters Manju, 15, Anju, 10, Bimala, 8, and five-year-old son Umesh. Rai, who was reportedly mentally ill for the last three months, also attacked his 29-year-old son Ramesh and his neighbour Kapil Rai. But they survived the brutal attacks, DSP Basnet told The Kathmandu Post.

The police came to know about the massacre after the VDC chairman informed them over telephone. Basnet said a police team has been dispatched to the VDC shortly after receiving information of the incident for necessary investigations.

‘Lawmakers fail to understand SC ruling’

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KATHMANDU, Sept 30 - In the continued tussle between the legislature and the judiciary, a Supreme Court Justice today accused the lawmakers of failing to understand the apex court’s ruling.

"The whole tussle between the Supreme Court and the House of Representatives began with the misunderstanding and the misinterpretation of the Court’s ruling," said Justice Laxman Aryal.

Lawmakers have been criticising the Supreme Court for its decision last week to scrap the Constituency Development Programme Implementation Procedure.

The parliamentarians were getting Rs. 1 million each from the government "to implement development projects" in their respective constituencies. The Lower House of parliament had appropriated Rs. 265 million for the same purposes through the Appropriation Bill.

"The Court will pass the written judgement as early as Monday or Tuesday. We were only saying that there should be law that governs the spending. A public money spending Act would make such expenditure more transparent," Aryal said.

"This is signs of executive dictatorial. The spending should be within a specified law or the financial regulations," he said.

Following the Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday, lawmakers had alleged the judges of incompetency and claimed that since money allocated were part of The Appropriation Bill adopted by parliament, it was within the existing laws.

Some MPs had even said these judges should be declared incapable and then impeached and removed by the House.

The Supreme Court had issued a directive order to the government to implement the programme through a proper Act instead of implementing through the present procedure.

The court also ordered that the Constituency Development Programme Implementation Procedure is not a law and members of parliament can receive such money only after making a proper law.

Aryal was speaking at a programme organized by the Nepal Democratic Association on a debate over whether the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) should be able to investigate on the Supreme Court and other judges including the Chief Justice on charges of corruption.

A Bill proposing second amendment to the CIAA Act is being discussed at the parliamentary State Affairs Committee which has initially agreed that judges should also be considered figures holding public offices and within the jurisdiction of CIAA.

As expected, the Supreme Court judges are against the proposal.

"Under no circumstances should the Supreme Court be put under the jurisdiction of the CIAA. CIAA is an investigating body like the police and if Supreme Court is put under it then the apex court will not be Supreme any more," Aryal argued. "Not even under the Panchayat rule such an attempt had been made."

Aryal said that the judges are not seeking concession to be corrupt but even under the present laws the judges are not immune to charges of corruption. "We should be concentrating on improving the present laws and amending it if necessary but the spirit of independent judiciary should not be crushed," Aryal said.

Former House Speaker and Senior Advocate Daman Nath Dhungana said this was the last chance for the judiciary to correct their flaws. He said the mode of the Judiciary Council should be improved and the Courts need to change its functioning.

"No one including the Chief Justice enjoys immunity when it comes to corruption charges," said Constitution expert Mukund Regmi adding there was not need to make changes in the present Constitution. Regmi suggested that there should be a committee formed with the House that will initiate impeachment procedure and then file cases against the judges charged with corruption.

Ex-Kamaiya rehabilitation far from done in western Terai

By Surendra Phuyal

DHANGADHI (Kailali), Sept 30 – Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba’s pledge to resettle all ex-Kamaiyas by mid-February (Magh-end) may have come as a sigh of relief to many, but it has raised the heckles of the concerned government officials in Bardiya, Kailali and Kanchanpur districts. More than half of the 100,000-plus ex-Kamaiyas liberated last year, live in the three districts.

Land Reforms officials, who are responsible for distributing lands to the ex-Kamaiyas, are working together with the district administration and other concerned officials these days to finish land distribution works before the targeted date. But, as was the case in the past, the liberated ex-Kamaiyas languishing in plastic-sheet-roofed camps here are less optimistic. NGO activists working for the betterment of ex-Kamaiyas are not hopeful either.

"Nope," laments Basanti Chaudhari, a mother of three, as she breast-feeds her youngest baby in Maneragaudi camp on the outskirts of this dusty Terai hub, "we aren’t convinced that the government will provide us with lands and we will be settled. They promised to do so before last Chait (March-April), then again before Ashar (June-July) and now they are talking about Magh (February). We don’t think this will ever happen."

Fourteen months after the government decided to liberate 100,000-plus Kamaiyas, working as bonded laborers in Banke, Bardiya, Dang, Kailali and Kanchanpur districts, nearly half of the ex-Kamaiya families remain to be resettled. Knowledgeable government and non-government officials say resettlement works have been completed in the other two districts – Dang, Banke, which is home to about 1,200 Kamaiya families.

While announcing his landmark socio-economic reforms programme in parliament on August 16, Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba also pledged to settle the resettlement problem of the ex-Kamaiyas, who were officially freed in July last year, by coming Magh (January-February).

So far the officials have distributed landowners’ certificates to 2,040 of the 3,045 landless ex-Kamaiya families in Kanchanpur, 2,049 of the 2,691 ex-Kamaiyas in Bardiya, while in Kailali officials say they are in the process of taking necessary measurements of the forestlands they have acquired from the government. And rehabilitation of the ex-Kamaiyas and their children is a different story altogether.

Be they the ones who have obtained landowners’ certificates or the ones who have not, the ex-Kamaiyas are living in pathetic condition inside unsafe and unhygienic camps in and around the forest areas in the three districts. So poor is their living condition that they do not even have proper drinking water and other sanitation facilities, and their children endlessly wait for their teachers at poorly furnished schools run by the Committee.

Dilli Chaudhari of the Backward Society Education (BASE), last month claimed that as many as 300 ex-Kamaiyas, most of them children and elderly people, died of various ailments and due to lack of health facilities.

"Thirteen people died in our camp alone due to lack of medical facilities this year," said Chait Ram Tharu, an ex-Kamaiya at the Maneragaudi camp. "There is no facility. The government does not care about us. The officials frequently distribute blankets, food and other stuff to ex-Kamaiyas and squatters. But every time we have been spared."

In Kailali and Kanchanpur districts, the forest authorities have been forced to dole out virgin forest areas to the former bonded laborers despite the fact that the districts have enough eilani (unclaimed and mostly government-owned) lands. According to Nawaraj Baral, District Forest Officer of Kailali, Kailali district alone has as much as 17,000 bighas of eilani land.

"But the lands are occupied and tilled by rich farmers and landlords," Baral said. "And because there is no proper coordination between the concerned authorities—the DFO and Land Reforms Office, in this case—and no official efforts to retrieve those lands, we cannot do anything."

Yet the Kailali DFO is distributing some 504 bighas of land scattered in the district’s forest areas to the ex-Kamaiyas. Khadga Bahadur Chapagain, Under Secretary at the Ministry of Land Reforms, who is charged with a responsibility to settle the ex-Kamaiya rehabilitation problem in Kailali, said land distribution works are underway.

He added, "Now that the Forest Office has already given us the 504 bighas of land, we are pretty hopeful that we will be able to distribute lands to the ex-Kamaiyas weeks before the deadline of Magh (January/February) set by the Prime Minister. And for that we are working to garner necessary support from all the political parties, although the NGOs are appearing less supportive."

An NGO official in Dhangadi, however, is skeptical that the problem could be settled by mid-February (Magh-end). "The rehabilitation problem has been quite complicated and tangled up here (in Kailali) and in neighboring Bardiya and Kanchanpur," said Churna Bahadur Chaudhari, Project Director of BASE.

"The non-Kamaiyas or the landless squatters have all mixed up with the genuine ex-Kamaiyas living in at least a dozen camps of Kailali alone…What is wanted is another bold step from the government, from the center, which should be able to coordinate its bodies and the non-governmental organizations."

Kantipur FM holds interaction

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KATHMANDU, Sept 30 - An interaction programme was held in the capital today to discuss the transmission of Kantipur FM 96.1 from Bhedetar of Dhankuta that went on air recently.

On the occasion, Minister for Information and Communication Jay Prakash Prasad Gupta said that Kantipur Publications has been committed towards conserving language and the culture.

Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives Chitra Lekha Yadav said programmes on FM radio station should also focus on gender equality.

However, member of Parliament from Sankhuwasabha Tanka Rai criticized the FM station for airing on mixed language. Rai is also the Chairman of the parliamentary Development and Communication Committee.

About 20 lawmakers from the eastern region participated in the programme.

Chairman of the Kantipur Publication Hem Raj Gyawali said that the government should be more liberal towards the private media.

The Kantipur FM has been airing test transmission in the eastern region since September 5. A report submitted during the programme stated that the FM station has over 5 million listeners in the Kathmandu Valley, areas surrounding it and in the eastern region.

'Maoists may come to political mainstream'

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KATHMANDU, Sept 30 – Speaker of the House of Representatives Taranath Ranabhat today said that the recent developments after the terrorist strikes in the US would compel the Maoists to come to the political streamline.

Ranabhat suggested that the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) should use the opportunity to give up arms and come to the political mainstream. He was addressing a seminar on conflict management strategies for democracy consolidation in Nepal today.

The Speaker termed the Maoists as terrorists. His statement came just before the third round of the government-Maoist talks, likely to take place in the near future. He accused the rebels breaching the spirit of the existing cease-fire. "This is a result of internal conflict in the party."

He also said that the arrest of Nepali Maoists in India and the Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh’s remark that the Maoists are terrorist, are significant developments.

General secretary of CPN (United Marxist Leninist) Madhav Kumar Nepal charged that the Maoists were opposed to democracy and opposition.

Pashupati Shamser JB Rana, the general secretary of Rastriya Prajatantra Party, said while traces of Mao have become almost extinct in the Republic of China, some people are taking the name of Mao for their benefits. Hridayesh Tripathi, the lawmaker from Nepal Sadbhawana Party, blamed the government that it is responsible for the Maoist and other existing conflicts in the country.