‘Let’s work together to preserve the Himalayan watersheds’

TKP: Could you shed some light on Pakistan’s current power and water resources development scenario?

Mulk: Well, talking about hydropower, we currently have an installed capacity of about 5,000 megawatts. And we are working on some more big hydro projects such as the 1400 MW Ghazi Barotha on the Indus River and the 80 MW Malakand III, which are available to be done. We are also in the phase of carrying out pre-feasibility and feasibility studies on a number of other projects.

TKP: How do you perceive SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) countries and the issue of water?

Mulk: Actually we share the same Himalyan water resources. At least the SAARC countries starting from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Pakistan, they share the same water and that is from the Himalayas—the major source of freshwater. Therefore, I personally believe that cooperation should take place, if the countries of the region are to prosper. More so, between Nepal and the other regional countries, because Nepal has so much of hydro resources it cannot consume alone.

But the neighbours need a lot more energy. And this could provide a very cheap and environment friendly source of energy. So I think there is not only a possibility, but I would personally feel that there is a great need for this cooperation to take place.

TKP: And do you see any possibilities for cooperation in water between India and Pakistan, the arch-rivals?

There are many, actually. But the thing is India requires a lot of power and so does Pakistan. Telling you the truth, both countries area short of power. We already have an agreement, which is called the Indus Water Treaty. And we have no agreement so far of exchanging power between the two countries. But a situation could arise when you really finance or it would become possible to finance on projects.

It could become possible if you finance. If someone says let’s invest in Nepal, or let’s invest in the upper catchment of Pakistan on the Indus river. Then we have to find the market. I am sure there is a tremendous market for power in the region. Because we are among those countries which have the lowest per capital consumption of power.

TKP: What do you think Nepal needs to do?

I am not able to say just for Nepal. I am sure that they recognize the need of cooperation and I think that cooperation must come. Nepal must be enabled to make use of its abundant water resources for the benefit and good of its people. Not only this, I believe that being in the upper catchment of the Himalayan watershed, it is its responsibility to keep the watershed in good shape. It will depend a great deal on how much resources it has to keep its catchment in a good shape. If it can make money out of this, if it becomes an economic resource for Nepal, then Nepal will start investing resource in keeping its catchment in good shape. This resource must be perpetual and sustainable.

TKP: What do you think is lacking to foster regional cooperation in South Asia?

Mulk: This issue was also raised by some of our friends from Bangladesh and Nepal during the meet. I personally believe that the resources of economic compulsion have not yet been recognised by us. We have to look at this. We have within the region an alternative. And each alternative has to be pursued. And I am very confident that slowly and steadily this recognition is coming up. We have got to be more sensitive to our needs. But I am very confident that it will not take too long. Human mind eventually will succumb to logic.

TKP: And about this conference?

The most important thing is that we sat together with friends from Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, we discussed issues, and we exchanged experiences and comments. Sitting back home isolated in your countries without communicating with your neighbours does not help much. The region can’t benefit that way. And I hope such conferences necessary. Such gatherings and constructive interactions open our eyes, and help us understand the regional problems. They have organised it extremely well. And next is our turn.

The dust has finally settled, and Mangalsen wakes from the dead

By Gunaraj Luitel / Chitranga Thapa

MANGALSEN, Accham, March 3 : The headquarters of Accham district and the airport in Sanphebagar still stand as a quiet witness to the bloodiest attack ever by Maoist rebels two weeks ago.

Krishna Prasad Jaisi, the Chairperson of District Development Committee (DDC), is working hard by taking his cue from the Mayor of New York city as his role model in reconstructing destroyed heritage in this part of the country. He also knows there is a dire need to reform the morale and courage of the affected locals.

"The courage of the people should be revived," Jaisi told The Kathmandu Post on Saturday. The Maoists killed 150 security officials, government officials and civil people altogether. They then destroyed government property exactly two weeks ago on Saturday night.

Mangalsen badly needs to be reconstructed after the worst attack by Maoists insurgents during their - 6 year - long insurgency. The important and necessary records of the District Administration Office, District Court, Land Revenue Office, and the Telecommunication office were all lost in the pandemonium.

"It would have been better if the government established a ‘basket fund’ to reconstruct according to preferences," said Jaisi, "The best option is to mobilize local people according to the plan and budget that the government provides."

The situation in Mangalsen calls for the quickest possible reconstruction but this has not happened. It is necessary to keep alive the hopes of locals and this can be done only through development and reconstruction projects.

Ministers and high profile officials visit the district and hang around for hours; but what Mangalsen really needs is not flashy echelons in the seats of power but rather officials with vision and helping hands to speed up the reconstruction process. The assurances made by them are gone with the wind.

The government officials who survived the attack need a peaceful life. Some of them have only the clothes they have on their bodies and some of them are living lives similar to refugees.

The locals have been mobilized to clean attacked houses. A government committee headed by Jaisi is assessing the loss.

"The real loss is too large to estimate, we haven’t completed assessment as yet," said Jaisi. "Currently, we are trying to fathom the reconstruction cost of government offices."

Some of the offices can still be used with minor repair works. Several offices have survived the vicious attack and can still be used. Jaisi further states, the offices need to run as soon as possible and the furniture can be shared.

New Chief District Officer, Luk Bahadur Chhetri, is trying to convince the central government from his tent in front of the destroyed Mangalsen Palace. The Nepal Police and the Royal Nepalese Army are working in tandem with the newly appointed officials at Mangalsen

Even then, with all the bickering and bantering, coupled with the hopes and despair of going through the reconstruction process, not only the headquarters but the whole district has the looks of a ghost town still haunted by the memories of a deadly attack. Locals feel depressed to see political leaders flying out of the headquarters with promises that seem to be null and void.

"No one seems to have the sense," said Tekendra Khanal, the secretary of Nepal Students Union. "All the leaders have fled away. Accham has only one true son – the chairperson of the DDC."

Restoring electricity supply after 4 days of continuous attack and the drinking water supply was not much of a problem. "The mule trains for food supply were activated a week ago," said Jaisi. "The situation is slowly returning to normal."

The whole market closes down before the sun sets. No one is ready to utter words about that horrific night. "The heritage and pride of this place is lost," said an elderly farmer Indra Bahadur Swar, "I don’t even have the appetite to eat anymore."

Jaisi demanded social programmes for the district. "The government should enlist the preferences," said Jaisi. "A morale boost is necessary for the people down here, and projects here should be continued."

Food transport to districts stopped

Post Report

MYAGDI, March 3 : Security forces have stopped the transportation of food from district headquarters to various other places in a bid to starve and force Maoist rebels to come out from their forest hideouts.

The insurgents generally buy or loot food from shops in rural areas to fulfill their needs in the forest, according to an official. "The security forces are trying to draw them out through hunger so that they could come out in the open to attack them," said an official, requesting anonymity.

Although the transit of a large amount of food such as noodles, biscuits and rice is prohibited, villagers are allowed to carry a small amount for everyday use, said an official.

The people in Myagdi and Mustang, with farming being their primary occupation, produce crops that are limited in quantity and are mostly dependent on transported food from the market. Normal lifestyles of people living in these two districts are expected to suffer hard due to this prohibition, according to locals.

The prohibition has also caused problems for yak owners. "Hundreds of workers will be unemployed as the yaks will remain in their sheds," said Ram Gauchan, the chairperson of Yak Entrepreneur’s Association. "yak entrepreneurs will face a loss as their investment on yaks will not yield any profit."

"The Maoists will loot villages to survive and if that happens, the people will suffer more with the scarcity of food," said Mukti Roka, deputy chairperson of Nepal Red Cross Society, Myagdi branch.

"VDCs can be given permission to transport a limited amount of food under tight security, but only on a reference by the VDC’s office," said Mathur Prasad Yadav, Chief District Officer in Myagdi. "We have also organised an all-party meeting to discuss special provisions on these issues," he stressed further.

Equal rights for languages demanded

Post Report

KATHMANDU, March 3  : Community leaders today demanded an amendment of in the constitution to give equal rights to hundreds of languages spoken in the country, according to UN conventions, while addressing a programme on release of a report of Nepal bhasa Action Committee (NAC) on amendment of the constitution.

Communist Party of Nepal UML Standing Committee Member, Jhalnath Khanal and Indigenous People Women’s Association chairperson Bam Kumari Budhamagar today released the NAC report on equal language rights and amendment of the constitution.

The report, based on a seminar held on March 17,2001, demands that the constitution defines that communities, language-users and cultures are the resources of the country’s sovereignty and also mention that the their communal, lingual, cultural and civil rights should not be suppressed.

"Nepal is a multi-lingual country. All languages are of equal importance to the state. All languages spoken in the country as mother languages should be named as national languages in the constitution and the government should recognize them on an equal basis."

It further adds, "Provision should be made that the medium of different languages could be used as administrative and contact language for different levels and regions. National languages used on local levels should be used in the administration of local bodies."

It also states that the constitution should guarantee communal, lingual and regional autonomy in the state administration.

Addressing the programme, Jhalnath Khanal said the present constitution has done no justice to speakers of hundreds of languages throughout the country.

General secretary of Nationalities Federation of Nepal, Balkrishna Mabuhang said that the voices of different nationalities and indigenous people, were not given responses to by political parties.

Bam Kumari Budhamagar said the government has always been in the hands of a class of people who developed a practice of encroaching on others’ rights and preferred ruling the country through power rather than by participation of the people.

Coordinator of NAC, Malla K Sundar said that both, the ruling party Nepali Congress and the opposition CPN-UML had quite encouraging words to say but both parties used the agenda of equal rights to languages as election issues and then completely threw it to the wind.

The present constitution offers equal rights to each and every citizen but any languages other than Nepali could not be used in the administration even as a supplementary language. The Supreme Court issued a verdict against the supplementary use of Newari, Maithali and the Bhojpuri dialects in different municipalities and district development committees two and a half years ago.

Call for dispute settlement at local level

Post Report

KATHMANDU, March 3 : Legal and decentralisation experts here Sunday said that the provision of arbitration board as stated in Local Self-governance Act should be brought into harness as soon as possible.

The experts representing different sectors discussed extensively on where the problem lies since the Act has provided enough provisions for the implementation of the arbitration board and the government is also ready to cater necessary resources.

"The problem may lie on the level of understanding," said Law Secretary Uday Nepali Shrestha. Shrestha was speaking at a programme ‘ Presentation of the Study Report Regarding Arbitration Board’ presented by Reliance Law Firm in association with United Nations’ Development Programme and the Ministry of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs.

Responding to the queries the law secretary assured the report would cater fruits.

Briefing on the report, leader of the study team Purna Man Shakya said the dispute settlement mechanism at the local level like mediation, negotiation and arbitration target.

"Settling the dispute through compromise on the basis of local values is more important than winning or losing a particular case. It does not disintegrate society, therefore, it is a better mechanism," Shakya added.

Speaking on the occasion, Secretary of the Judicial Council Kashi Raj Dahal said decentralisation of power is the basis of a democratic system.

Dahal also said that mediation is turning out to be a popular means for dispute settlement at home and abroad, therefore, it should be enhanced with the involvement and participation of local community.

However, many of the participants were sceptical about the implementation of the report bacause several similar reports had been conducted but none of them reached implementation, according to the participants.

They also called for a better co-ordination of the law ministry regarding the conduction of such research programmes.

Govt to set up Medical Division

RSS

KATHMANDU, March 3 : His Majesty’s Government is to establish a Medical Division under the Ministry of Health for the coordinated operation of all the health institutions throughout the country and the effective utilization of medical procedures.

Minister for Health Sharat Singh Bhandari told RSS that the medical division under the Ministry of Health will follow up the operations, classification and categorization of hospitals run by the government and the non-government across the country as well as carry out research on different aspects of quality medicine and disease resistance procedures.

He also said that in the context of the non-existence of a separate authority to look after sectors such as ayurved medicine, quality of medicine, communicable and non-communicable disease, the department of drug administration and all procedures of medical treatment at the health ministry at present, specialists from these sectors would be drawn in the division and necessary policies to be adopted by the ministry in that connection formulated as per their recommendation.

A specialist team headed by the minister of state for health has already assessed whether or not the private hospitals and clinics have followed the conditions set out to them while issuing operation licence, Minister Bhandari said, adding that process for action will be initiated against such hospitals not following these conditions within the stipulated timeframe.

He said a nine-member committee will be formed at the VDC level under the convenorship of the VDC chairman to manage the VDC health posts in a bid to calm down public complaints of lack of doctors at the sub-health posts which are the basis of rural health services, and also to provide the basic health services to the rural people.

The committee would have four men and four women members to ensure gender equality, he added.

The ministry is also doing necessary home work regarding the kind of policy the government needs to adopt in connection with treatment of diseaes of the heart, kidney, nerve and other such non-communicable diseases by establishing separate units of concerened specialists from the government and non-governmental sector on the basis of their recommendations, Minister Bhandari stated.

According to him, the ministry is also doing home work regarding the implementation of the Ayurved Council Act, making necessary amendments to the health service act, introduction of a bill governing the operation of hospitals and related health institutes in the private sector and formulating a policy on the management of infectious hospital waste.

The ministry has also banned the haphazard importation of medicines of different brands with the objective of making the health services effective, he further said.

The ministry has also scrapped the earlier provision under which foreign companies could import unspecified amount of medicines into the country and stopped the registration of such medicines, Bhandari disclosed.

He further said that the department of drug administration has categorized medical drugs into two categories, namely life-saving drugs and essential drugs and a company acquiring selling licence for one category of drugs can only register for a maximum of two other brands of drugs.

Similarly, regarding the domestic pharmaceutical companies, a company will not be entitled to register for selling one category of medicine under ten different brand names.

Likewise, a foreign company will also not be entitled to sell more than five different brands of the same medicine manufactured by the same company.

This measure will remove the problem of the importation of many kinds of medicines into the country and the subsequent difficulty involved in quality control of medicines, he said, adding the measure will also once and for all end the possibility of import of sub-standard and spurious medicine.

‘Corrupt leaders should be kept in black list’

Post Report

KATHMANDU, March 3 : Speakers at a talk programme today stressed for promulgation of anti corruption bill in the current session parliament to bale the country out from the brink of collapse.

General Secretary of the ruling Nepali Congress Party, Sushil Koirala, speaking at the talk programme on "role of government, political parties, people’s representatives and the youth in controlling corruption", organised by Nepal Tarun Dal, pointed out the need for strict laws to curb corruptio0n at the earliest.

" If this situation prevails for some more times, the existence of our nation would cease", Koirala warned.

He further said that people’s positive support was inevitable for a nation to get success in every efforts including control on corruption and terrorism. He also suggested the government to take immediate measures to acquire people’s support.

"Tarun Dal should launch awareness programmes against corruption and terrorism", Koirala added.

Bal Krishna Khand, president of Nepal Tarun Dal called the party leaders not encourage the corrupts by placing them in party high posts.

"The corrupts should be kept into black list and should not be given parliamentary tickets", He said, adding, "A corrupt indulges in corruption for personal benefit but the whole party circle have to be defamed".

He also charged upon the corrupt parliamentarians and ministers, though not aimed at anyone in particular, that their activities have caused for bending the head of general party cadres.

Advocate Sher Bahadur KC suggested the ruling party for empowering the existing mechanism to control corruption but not to establish a separate arbitrary court. "The new mechanism will be influenced by political pressure as sharing of the appointees among the ruling, opposition party and the court prevails there."

He also suggested to promulgate three bills related to corruption control simultaneously. " If the impeachment bill does not come together a most corrupt sector, the court, remains above the law", KC said.

Party presidents from Rolpa and Solukhumbu, Madhav Acharya and Ang Gelu Sherpa said it was the corruption which brought the country into this stage and nothing else.