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Kathmandu Monday January 28, 2002 Magh 15, 2058.
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Paying up
It has come to light that the government has yet
to cough up the money to pay for a big part of the face lift it gave the capital recently.
This could be more than a mere footnote to the recently concluded 11th SAARC summit. The
government won a measure of kudos for tidying things up for the occasion, going about the
task on a war footing and more or less completing it on time. There were generous comments
about how we in this country can really get things done when there is sufficient
motivation and how this could be a lesson for our endeavours in economic development. We
only stopped short of giving ourselves a collective pat on the back. But now that the
SAARC summit has been consigned to history and the Kathmandu Declaration is already
beginning to gather dust on the shelves of government offices, the National Construction
Company of Nepal, which undertook to mend 30 kilometres of road to literally smoothen the
summit ride, finds itself left high and dry. The government is yet to pay it 100 million
rupees towards the cost of the repairs. Only a quarter of that amount has been paid so
far. NCCN in turn has had to leave sundry companies, from which it mobilised the necessary
resources, in a state of uncertainty as to when they will see their money. If they are not
paid this year they will simply sink, said one NCCN official. The government for its part
has entered the plea that it has had to curtail the development budget because of the
increased security expenditure, and that the SAARC summit was not covered by the budget
for the current fiscal year. In a diversionary mode, officials have cast doubts on the
quality of the repairs carried out so hastily. That is not going to get them off the hook
of course.
The question of whether we should have hosted a
prestige event in a time of Maoist insurrection is now very academic. But what we should
now be asking ourselves is how long this country can go on fighting a costly bush war
without making real sacrifices in various areas of national life. And we are not talking
about widening the tax net. What we are talking about is curtailing government expenditure
on travel and procurement, reducing the size of the cabinet, putting on hold all but the
most essential public works, thinking twice before hosting any other regional, national or
even international gala occasion, and cracking down on corruption, particularly on the big
fish involved, so that revenue leakage will really get plugged. There are easily a dozen
ways to manage the public purse more wisely. It is only a question of the political will
and the amount of pressure that can be brought to bear on those who exercise that will.
This is a tack that should be taken with the seriousness it deserves. It is likely that
the donor community is not going to bankroll our anti-Maoist campaign even half way. Their
priorities lie with other conflicts elsewhere. Half a century of foreign aid in Nepal has
given aid an indifferent reputation even though the fault is not entirely our own. The
forthcoming Nepal Development Forum meeting is unlikely to reverse the trend. And while
mulling all this, the authorities would also do well to pay off NCCN lest failure to do so
should detract from the image of a SAARC summit that was already not without some
controversy. |
