NC to observe chaitra 26 as People's Movement Day

BY A STAFF REPORTER

Karthmandu, April 1: The Nepali Congress has decided to observe Chaitra 26 as People's Movement Day every year.

To mark the Day for this year, the party will organise a mass meeting at Tundikhel on April 9. The party also formed the People's Movement Day -2057 Main Organising Committee on Friday under the chairmanship of the party's Kathmandu district President and Minister of State for Health Tirtharam Dongol.

The Committee's meeting was held today at the party's central office at Teku in the presence of Party President and Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, CWC members, ministers, MPs and presidents of the party's district president of Bagmati zone and the presidents of the party's sister organisations.

In order to observe the Day in a grand manner, three sub-committees for dias preparation, volunteer mobilisation and publicity were also formed.

The district working committee of Kathmandu has been given the responsibility of dais preparation. Similarly, Balkrishna Khand, central president of Nepal Tarun Dal, is the coordinator of volunteer mobilisation sub-committee and Bishwaprakash Sharma, central president of Nepal Students' Union, is the coordinator of the publicity sub-committee.

Army mobilisation at Biratnagar customs from today

By Our Correspondent

Biratnagar, April 1: The mobilisation of army at the Biratnagar customs starts tomorrow. Already personnel of the Royal Nepalese Army have been mobilised in several other customs points such as Kakarvitta, Birgunj, Bhairahawa, Nepalgunj and Tatopani Customs check-points with encouraging results.

According to Janakraj Pant, chief customs officer at the Biratnagar customs office, 30 army personnel, led by Captain Madhusudan Rana, will be deployed and they would play important role in checking smuggling and trading of goods without paying duties and taxes.

Pant said the army will be mobilised at the main customs check-post as well as at other smaller check-points at Madhumalla, Tarigama, Kadmaha, Mayagunj, Rangeli, Dainiya, Chunibari, Doriya and Chaukighat. These nine smaller check-points come under the Biratnagar customs office. The army will act under the direct control and instruction of the chief customs officer.

Pant expressed confidence that after the mobilisation of army, smuggling and other illegal trade will be controlled.

Although there is provision for customs patrol to check illegal trade through the open border, but all the posts of the customs patrol at the Biratnagar customs office are vacant.

Protest against troubling monkeys

BY OUR CORRESPONDENT

Rautahat, April 1: The residents of Sabgada, Rautahat Municipality are launching a movement to pressure the 'concerned authority' to control the monkeys that have been troubling them for several months.

The monkeys have been destroying crops, eating their vegetables, biting children and harassing women. Many people have been wounded from the attacks of the monkeys.

"The concerned authority have been indifferent to the troubles created by the monkeys," Seikh Nudal Hoda said. "We are launching a movement as our repeated written requests have gone unheeded."

Seikh Jamsed said that they were compelled to resort to a movement as the responsible authorities were negligent in their duty.

According to the schedule of the movement, Sabgada residents will organise a protest rally at Gaur on Thursday. In the second phase, they will block the Gaur-Chandranigahapur road two weeks later. The third phase protest will be Gaur bandh a week later. The last stage of the movement will be hunger strike till death.

Chief District Officer Anand Raj Pokharel said that he had informed the Nattional Parks authority which he said had not responded with seriousness.

VTPO mooting to issue IDLs

By Krishna Sharma

Kathmandu, Apr 01:It was decades ago that Nepal became an active member of the International Automobile Association (IAA) decades ago. But being a member of IAA was of little use in the practical terms.

However, with the government renewing its membership of IAA last year, the Valley Traffic Police Office (VTPO) is mulling over the idea of introducing International Driving Licenses (IDL). This would help Nepalese visiting abroad because they could drive.

"We are in the preparatory phase. We are studying the procedures of issuing international driving licenses so that only qualified people could receive them and they are not misutilized," DSP Prakash Aryal of the Valley Traffic Police Office told The Rising Nepal.

The VTPO plans to award such licenses to only those Nepalese who already own national traffic license, passport and visa.

"Again, the aspirants have to go through computerized tests, trials and interviews before acquiring the licenses," says Superintendent of Police Sharada Bhakta Ranjit of the VTPO.

One special feature of such license would be that it remains valid until the visa expires.

As for the Nepalese who frequently fly abroad on business visas, VTPO officials say that they still have to think of the procedure of issuing licenses to such people since it would be impractical to call them for licenses every time they go abroad.

Meanwhile, those who acquire such licenses are allowed to drive in only the IAA member countries. There are more than a hundred countries around the world affiliated with the IAA. Neighboring India also issues international driving licenses.

On whether the license holders would face difficulty while driving in countries where there is right lane driving system, SP Ranjit says that the IDL holders would be informed of the driving system and the international traffic signals.

"Right lane driving should not be a big problem and since Nepal has adopted international traffic signals there would also be no problem for them to understand traffic signals and rules."

Meanwhile, IAA also works for the promotion of world tourism. For promoting tourism industry worldwide it has developed car-net system and has allowed the member countries to issue IDL.

Car-net is a system very much useful for those willing to travel around the world by using their own vehicles. Many tourists visit Nepal driving their own vehicles by utilising the car-net facility. Nepalese customs offices allow such tourists to enter the country along with their vehicles by issuing their car-net facilities. Such car-net facility is valid for only 180 days.

Importance of census highlighted

Kathmandu, Apr. 1 (RSS): A need has been felt for a commission comprising of distinguished persons representing a cross-section of the society for creating pressure for the impartial and objective collection and publishing of statistics relating to the language, religion and ethnicity of different communities across the country in the upcoming National Census-2001.

The need for such a commission was pointed out at a workshop seminar on "National Census-2001 and Buddhists" organised here Saturday by the Youth Buddhist Group of Kathmandu.

The participants justified the need for constituting such a commission in the present context when there are still doubts about the state tampering with the statistics of the national census during the data processing and publication process.

They concluded that lack of awareness and interest among the Buddhists on the importance and usefulness of national census in the past has resulted in the misrepresentation of the Buddhists and attempts were made to reduce the Buddhist community into a minority position despite the existence of a large number of Buddhist communities in the country during the past censuses.

The seminar also suggested various strategies such as conducting door-to-door awareness campaigns in all places of the Kathmandu Valley predominantly settled by the Newar community, monitoring of the census enumerators, mobilizing their own volunteers, conducting a model survey of their own, familiarising the women data collectors of the model survey and constitution of an action committee in the course of the upcoming national census.

Addressing the seminar, chairman of the Dharmodaya Sabha Lok Darshan Bajracharya said that as consciousness that they are all Buddhists has developed among various ethnic communities in the country, directives have been issued to all followers of Buddhist religion to enumerate themselves as Buddhists in the upcoming national census.

He said that those not complying with the directive of the Dharmodaya Sabha would be excommunicated from the society and pledged every kind of financial support to any programmes brought with the purpose of creating religious consciousness among the Buddhists.

The Bhikshu Kaudinyan said ever since the political changes of 2046 B.S., the Newar community has been a divided house rather than it becoming united and called for unity among all the Newar communities and make the most of the opportunity provided by the upcoming national census in protecting their identity.

Expressing concern over rumours that it was not necessary to collect data relating to religion, language and ethnicity in the national census, industrialist Laxmi Das Manandhar said that the VDC chairmen, deputy-chairmen and the ward chairmen from every village development committee (VDC) should be familiarized about the national census and asked for their active involvement in the course of census-taking.

Representatives of various institutions and organisations from the Kathmandu valley attended the seminar presided over by chairman of the Youth Buddhist Group Shanta Ratna Shakya.

Bhutanese refugees
Verification has begun - what next?

BY NAVIN SINGH KHADKA

Kathmandu, April 1: It is indeed an onerous task. Verifying one by one, around 2,000 Bhutanese refugee families, for now. Going by its present pace (10 families a day), the Joint Verification Team (JVT) of Nepal and Bhutan would take not less than six months to identify the more than 12,000 Bhutanese citizens from one of the seven camps hosting the refugees in Jhapa and Morang Districts for 10 years now.

By that speed, another good four to five years will roll in when the two Himalayan Kingdoms will have verified the around 100,000 refugees living in exile in the country since 1991.

True, the work is mammoth-sized and massive time-consuming. Yet, the joint team has one reason to heave a sigh of relief. It need not accomplish the ultimate mission – pronounce who among the refugees are eligible Bhutanese to go back home. The Joint Ministerial Level Committee (JMLC) has that hard nut to crack.

Which means, the joint Nepalese and Bhutanese technical team will simply appraise the verification findings to its higher up that is supposed to put on show the scoreboard. Now comes the thorny question: Will the outcome of the verification lead to a smooth repatriation of the refugees?

Consider this: In the ongoing verification process, the Bhutanese refugees are required to fill up a performa before facing the Bhutanese officials for interview. The second part of the form they need to fill up demands vital information like the documents the refugees have to prove their citizenship, the date, place and reason of departure from Bhutan, among others.

The respondents, if they claim to be forcefully evicted from Bhutan, are also required to explain when and who forcefully expelled them. The document asks if the refugees have any proof of eviction. It also inquires if the refugees had made any appeal to higher authority when they were forcefully evicted. "If not, why?" is yet another inquisitive question in the performa.

If these grilling queries are any indication, Bhutan wants to know – and actually prove -- what category the screened refugees fall into. Nepal and Bhutan in 1993 had agreed to classify the refugees into four categories – Bonafide Bhutanese who have been forcibly evicted, Bhutanese who have emigrated, Non Bhutanese people and Bhutanese who have committed criminal acts.

Going by the questions the Bhutanese officials in the JVT have posed to almost all the interviewed-refugees so far, their focus is: Why did the Lhotsampas from southern Bhutan leave their homelands? The nature of the interrogation strongly suggests that the Dragon Kingdom intends to draw a line dividing the refugees into the first two categories – Bonafide Bhutanese who were forcibly evicted and Bhutanese who have emigrated.

That done by the technical verification team, the ministerial level will then be left with one riddle -- what next? The question, by all probability, will remain unanswered as long as Nepal and Bhutan continue to place the cart before the horse as they have now – having started the refugee-verification process before making their respective positions clear on the four categories of the refugees.

The two nations have had opposing stands on the refugee-classifications all over the years. While the Druk Yul has rigidly insisted that it would take back only the first category refugees, Nepal has made it clear it would not accept the remaining refugees labeled as non-nationals by the Bhutanese law. The Nepalese standpoint has been in line with almost all the refugees’ poignant experience that they were forced to sign voluntary migration forms by the Dragon Kingdom.

The two Himalayan Kingdoms had spent several rounds of talks in the mid 90’s to harmonize their positions on the four categories. But, all in vain. It was the same apple of discord that had stonewalled the ministerial level Nepal-Bhutan talks after the two sides confronted each other during the seventh round of talks in 1997.

When they agreed to revive the dialogue in 1999, the spotlight shifted to the verification process. The issue of their positions on the refugee categories remained in the back burner.

That was okay if only the verification was an end in itself. But, it is not. Ultimately, the findings of the identification process will have to pass through the x-rays of the two countries, which have yet to strike a deal on their positions on the refugee-categories.

And as long as that stiff difference exists, the refugee issue – even if the verification process gets over – will move nowhere. That has been a message loud and clear for long.