NATIONAL10 [PRIME MINISTER'S FUND (Spotlight Weelky)]

Free For All

A weekly newspaper's report charges the Prime Miniter's Office of squandering the prime minister's fund

By A CORRESPONDENT

Just when there have been media reports that the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) has embezzled heavy amount, Deshantar a vernacular Weekly has come out with staggering figures PM Krishna Prasad Bhattarai provided as grant from the national coffer. Here is the detail:

According to the widely read weekly, the chief executive boss has already disbursed above 110 million Rupees from the Prime Minister's fund. According to a relaible source, the grant given to different individual ranges from a minimum of 4,000 Rupees to as much as 50 million Rupees.


Cabinet Secretariat : Lacking accountability

Responding to media reports that alleged the PMO of embezzling the national coffer, the office of the chief executive had last week clarified the official policy of providing grant. "Only those who are in dire need of financial assistance will be helped by the Prime Minister's Fund," read the press release issued by the PMO.

But going by the records, those who have received the grant do not qualify the government's criteria. Following a meeting at the PMO last Thursday, the recommended Nepalese Ambassador to Sri Lanka Bal Bahadur Kunwar not only received 35,000 Rupees as medical allowance from the PM's fund but was also allowed to claim all treatment expenses from the Nepalese mission in Bangkok.

His bill, ultimately, will have to be paid by the Finance Ministry. The Ministers' Council, however, is yet to receive the record of the total expense. The PMO has provided 500,000 Rupees for B.P Sanskrit School at Solu.

Other recepients of the PM's grant include Til Bahadur Gurung from Gorkha (200,000 Rupees), MP Basu Dev Bhattarai (100,000 Rupees), Bhim Bahadur's family (100,000 Rupees), Dharma Thapa's family (500,000 Rupees), Dhanikraj Mandal of Siraha (200,000 Rupees), Dilli Raman Regmi (800,000 Rupees) and Kiran Chitrakar of Nepal Television (200,000 Rupees).

Few political leaders, under fictitious names, have also received the grant. According to the source, a top leader of the main opposition CPN-UML was given 1.5 million Rupees under the cover-up name of Bijay Kumar Pudel of Rupandehi. Yet another powerful leader was provided with the grant of one million Rupees under the name of Maheshwor Rai from Mahottari.

After he took office, Bhattarai is said to have decided to allocate 2.5 million Rupees for the fund and to prapare ledger after the amount is used. But given the trend of the money being spent from the fund, 2.5 million doesn't seem to suffice for even a week.

What has made the spending so easy is the faulty provision that does not require any reason to be mentioned for the money spent. Moreover, there has been so far no auditing of the PM's fund. With all these loopholes, there is hardly any way to believe that the PM's fund is being properly utilised.

If Bhattarai, as claimed by his press advisor Kishor Nepal, is a clean person with no black patch in the last 50 years, and if his image is not to be tainted, a white paper recording his fund's expenses should be issued mandatorily.