PSC can monitor appointments at corporations, army and police: Shakya

Chairman of the Public Service Commission (PSC) has said that the PSC can monitor the appointment of officials in government-owned corporations, army and police only if the government can provide it with more facilities.
“We are ready to monitor the appointment of officials in the government-owned corporations, the army and the police,” reports quoted PSC chairman, Tirthaman Shakya as saying.
Speaking at a meeting organised by the parliamentary State Affairs Committee (SAC) on Friday to discuss the draft of the Civil Service Bill 2006 he also urged the SAC to give authority to the PSC to select secretaries of the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority and the Election Commission so as to ensure further independence of the constitutional bodies.
Members of Parliament Pradeep Nepal, Hom Nath Dahal and Umakanta Chaudhary urged the PSC to take up the task of selecting officials in government-owned corporations, army and the police forces.
Currently, the PAC only conducts examinations for the selection of civil servants.
The debate o providing authority to PSC to select officials at government corporations and Army and Police started following reports that selections in these institutions are not transparent.

CPN fighters suffering from diseases in cantonment in eastern Nepal

Pneumonia, fever and skin diseases are spreading in a temporary camp of armed forces of the Communist Party of Nepal (CPN) (formerly known as guerilla) in eastern Jhapa district, The Himalayan Times reported here on Thursday.
"These diseases are spreading in the camp for last four days due to cold weather," the local English language newspaper quoted Naresh, military secretary at the camp, as saying.
"Hundreds of our comrades are suffering from fever, respiratory as well as skin diseases," he said.
He said that they were neither made available services from doctors nor sufficient medicines.
However, Ganesh Adhikari, who is in charge of the local camp management office, said that he was unaware of the spread of the disease.
A total of 850 CPN soldiers are staying in the camp where they are sleeping in plastic tents.

Nepal’s Newly Peaceful Maoists Set Up Camp and Wait

An emblem of Nepal’s next test of peace sits here, a short hike from the banks of the Bheri River, in this forested patch of midwestern hill where a war between the government and Maoist rebels has cut a wide swath of suffering for 10 years.

This is where the rebels are building one of the 22 camps where they have promised, under United Nations supervision, to sequester their troops, lock up their guns and dump their homemade bombs. Their cantonment, on a large campus of open fields and small squat buildings, was once a government-run agricultural research center.
Now a young woman in an Eminem T-shirt digs a trench for a sentry post. A team clears brush to set up a running track. A dozen cadres loll under the warm winter sun. A small army of tailors stitch new uniforms — almost exact replicas, they say proudly, of what Nepalese soldiers wear.
The legacy of conflict, which left a death toll of more than 13,000, is still raw in these parts. Getting to the camp means crossing the river in a dugout canoe, jostling for space with goats or a load of blankets for the rebels. There used to be a footbridge, but the Maoists destroyed it two years ago, hacking it apart piece by piece with a saw.
How Nepal manages to wean away its insurgents from destroying bridges to earning a living is a daunting challenge. Few countries are as poor as this one. Besides, rebel leaders want jobs for their fighters in a new national army, a prospect rife with political and logistical difficulties.
For now the Maoists are keeping their options open and the keys to their guns in hand.
Under a novel agreement with the government and the United Nations, they are to deposit their weapons in padlocked containers at each of the cantonments like this one. They will hold the keys, but their gun closets will be closely watched. Floodlights will shine each night. Surveillance cameras and burglar alarms will be installed.
For the sake of at least symbolic reciprocity, the Nepalese Army has promised to keep an equal number of its soldiers in their barracks.
An initial team of 35 United Nations monitors is expected to trickle in by the end of the year to oversee the Maoist and the army barracks alike, followed by an assessment team to determine the final size of the United Nations mission.
The sooner the monitors come, from the vantage point of Home Minister Krishna Prasad Sitaula, the better. “Otherwise it will be a problem for us, for the peace process,” he warned. “There will be doubts. New questions will arise, and suspicion.”
His apprehension is a measure of the still delicate efforts to end the civil war. An accord signed in mid-November allows the Maoists to join the interim government, followed by elections for a special assembly to rewrite the Constitution.
The assembly’s most charged task will be to decide whether the monarchy is to survive in this erstwhile Hindu kingdom. The rebels have made its abolition their chief goal, but they have promised to abide by the election results.
How many fighters the rebels actually have is a matter of contention. They claim 35,000; the government says the number is closer to 12,000. The army has 90,000 troops, and the Maoists want it shrunk by half.
Doubts persist on both sides.
Under the arms deal, only those who were part of the fighting forces before May are allowed to stay in these camps and become eligible for any disarmament package. But the Maoists are accused of drumming up new recruits to inflate their numbers and gain leverage in the negotiations.
Rebel leaders deny the accusation. The commander in charge of the Dashrathpur camp, a friendly man in a gray tracksuit who gave his name as Deepak and who could be mistaken for a suburban soccer dad, called such reports propaganda.
Dashrathpur one recent afternoon was chock-full of young rebel cadres, who were playing board games in the streets, marching in long columns with ancient rifles slung on their shoulders or hauling their new blankets up from the river’s edge.
During roll call it seemed plain that a great many were novices at revolution. They could hardly march in time, which explains why the drill sergeant repeatedly tried to banish a journalist from watching.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/06/world/asia/06nepal.html

NA concerned over reports of irregularities in ration contracts; inquiry launched

Nepal Army (NA) today said it was seriously concerned over the media reports about irregularities in contracts for supply of ration to barracks in mid-western region and the alleged threat to some of the contractors by army officers.

A press statement issued by the Directorate of Public Relations (DPR) of the army said tender for ration supply to the No. 24 Brigade in Jumla district has been reopened as the deadline of the first tender notice expired without any bidder coming up with a proposal.

The NA also announced that an inquiry board has been set up under Colonel Shekhar Singh Basnyat, who heads the army’s ration and transportation department, to look into the complaints of irregularities in army barracks in Rukum and Dailekh.

A report in Katipur daily on Monday said some of the bidders were facing threats from army commanders in Rukkum, Jumla and Dailekh districts, who wanted to award the ration tender to bidders quoting higher amount -- with a motive of pocketing hefty sum of commission.

The contractors said army officers of the Bhairabi Dal Battalion in Rukkum, the 24th Brigade in Jumla and Bhawani Box Battalion in Dailekh had been pressurizing them to withdraw their applications. The army officials also threatened to shoot down those refusing to withdraw their proposals.

Kantipur quoted Ram Bahadur Bhandari, a Nepalgunj-based ration supplier, as saying that Lt Colonel Bishnu Prasad Chapagain of the Bhairabi Dal Battalion had been pressuring him to withdraw his application registered at the District Administration Office.

“Earlier, even the local administration had barred us from registering the tender. We managed to register applications for tender only after the leaders of the eight parties asked the district administration to accept the applications,” Bhandari said, adding that some of the contractors were facing life threats from greedy army commanders.

UN agencies to start campaign for IDPs

With the objective of highlighting that all persons who have been displaced by the conflict should be able to voluntarily return home safely, in a dignified and sustainable way, the UN agencies are set to launch a three-week media campaign.

Stating that the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) has offered "an opportunity to resolve this hidden legacy of the conflict," the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), OHCHR (Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees) and OCHA (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) have joined hands in this campaign.
The campaign – which Nepali people will be able to watch on television and listen on radio – will appeal for ensuring conditions on the ground that ensure the conditions exist for displaced persons to return voluntarily to their homes.
"We want to underscore two points in our campaign – that the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) come from all kinds of social and political background and all of the IDPs have the right to return voluntarily to their places," said Kieran Dwyer, an official at the OHCHR-Nepal.
According to various estimates, there are between 200,000 to 250,000 IDPs in Nepal. "We don't know how many of them have returned in the past eight months of ceasefire. In some districts, around 90 percent of them have returned while in others the figure is very low. Many of them continue to face threats of persecution and have lost all their moveable properties, which have stopped them from returning," said Bjorn Pettersson, Internal Displacement Advisor at the OHCHR-Nepal.
Petterson said that the government should introduce concrete operational plan including packages of material assistance to help the IDPs.
Likewise, Michele Manca di Nissa, official of the UNHCR, said that while it is the primary responsibility of the state to take care of IDPs, the UN was willing to assist the state in this. Hanne Melfald of OCHA said many of the IDPs have blended very well with the community leading to the difficulty in ascertaining their actual number.