ARMEDD OUTFIT LEADER SHOT DEAD

OUTFIT LEADER SHOT DEAD

Kathmandu, 18 July: Shumshere Singh, Bara district inpcharge of the Janatantrik Tarai Madhes Mukti Morcha, was shot acrodd the border near Birgunj olvernignt, Radui
Beoaak said,
He was killed atChhaudadano.
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BUDGET PROMISES LABOUR CONTRACT WITH MAJOR DESTINATIONS

Kathmandu, 18 July: Making foreign employment transparent, responsible and accountable is one of major concern of the budget, according to the fiscal policy for the current fiscal year, The Himalayan Times reports.
It has also aimed at building strong regulating mechanism and labour contract with major destinations. Labour contracts with major destination will be top priority to the government in 2011-12, it read.

Currently, the government do not have labour contracts with half a dozen destinations where thousands of Nepalis are working. “There is no labour contract with Malaysia — the second largets job market after Qatar — since 2003 is the ignorance of pervious governments, according to National Association of Foreign Employment Agencies in Nepal — the umbrella organisation of over 700 outsourcing agencies — that has welcomed the budget for giving emphasis in labour contracts with major destinations with reservation in other issues.

“The budget aims to provide skill trainings to 21,000 overseas job seekers but it is tip in the ocean, “ president of the association Som Lal Bataju said, adding that it will not bring significant change in the sector.

Like pervious governments, the government is not positive to outsourcing sector, he claimed.

Just Rs 610 million is allocated for Ministry of Labour and Transport Management that handles issues of the over three million people abroad, he said, adding that only Rs 1.5 million is allocated for foreign employment promotion, which is not enough. The budget has also aimed to send skill manpower in foreign jobs providing trainings to youth. Skill trainings will be provided to youth according to the demands in major job markets, the budget read.

Major job markets of the Nepali youths are Qatar, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia where over two million Nepalis are working.

The government has accepted the challenge to fight against fraud in foreign employment on the backdrops of rising fraud and human trafficking in the name of abroad job. The current fiscal year witnessed 1,012 foreign employment frauds or cheating while numbers of fraud was 655 in 2009-10.

“It is because of weak monitoring mechanism of the government,” he said.

However, he warned that the association would not tolerate baseless blames to outsourcers in the name of fraud. “Investigating capacity of Department of Foreign Employment should be developed first,” he said.

Budget has promised to safeguard Nepali women migrant workers. Foreign Employment Promotion Board has granted right of job orientation for them.
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INTERVIEW

MAOIST FIGHTERS MUST BE INTEGRATED UNIT-WISE; DEV GURUNG
Kathmandu, 18 July: Dev Gurung is outspoken member of the Maoist hardline camp and a confidante of the leader of the camp, Mohan Baidya. A member of the constitution committee in the Constituent Assembly, he’s consistently been openly critical of Maoist chairman’s “centralised” leadership. Often, he publicly disagrees with positions taken by his party on peace and constitutional issues, including on the proposal brought forward by the Nepal Army on integration of the two armies. Kamal Dev Bhattarai and Gyanu Adhikari of The Kathmandu Post spoke with Gurung about the delays in integration and constitution writing.
Why hasn’t peace and constitution writing process moved at expected speed?
This is due to the issue of modality of integration of armies. The interim constitution and the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) use the word “integration.” But, instead of going for integration in the true sense, the proposal that have come from our friends in other parties is that—although they do use the word integration—they’ve proposed individual integration. Once you go for individual basis, it’s no longer integration—the principles become that of individual recruitment.
Is there disagreement on numbers?
This is not about numbers. The issue on numbers comes up only for individual recruitment.
So the discussions have not even touched on the numbers?
The question of numbers does not come up when the integration is done on unit-wise basis. For example, the PLA in cantonment, the force, is a single unit. In that unit, once some go for rehabilitation or voluntary retirement—maybe one, two or three divisions left. Those divisions go for integration on a unit-wise basis. Fixing number first goes against the spirit of the constitution.
Is the process going to be stuck until the issue of unit-wise versus individual recruitment get resolved?
Integration won’t happen in an individual basis, there’s no question about that. Once you go on individual basis, you have to separate the combatants from their weapons, and then PLA no longer remains an army force. It becomes civilian. An army unit is equipped with weapons. It’s not detached from weapons and it’s not disarmed and demobilised.
Presumably, the disagreement on this principle is between the Maoists party and the Nepali Congress.
Certainly. It’s with Nepali Congress. And also with UML, although it does not have a clear concept or stance.
But your party leadership has proposed to other parties that it would accept the modality proposed by the Nepal Army (NA) and accept integration of 8,000 combatants.
Some individuals within the NA may have prepared and forwarded a
proposal. But institutionally, NA cannot prepare that type of political proposals. Whatever we’ve heard about the proposal, it was not prepared formally. The draft that’s been given was to share their expertise and experience. The NA hasn’t prepared a proposal formally as an institution.
Do you then agree with the proposal from your leadership—to accept the modality shared by NA and fix the number of soldiers to 8,000?
A security forces under the government cannot prepare a political proposal. It just can’t.
Given that there’s a deadlock in both the peace process and constitution writing, some say that it’s due to the disagreements within the Maoists.
That’s propaganda. The reality is different. This debate on principles is primarily between Nepali Congress and us. On the peace process, we claim that our proposal is aligned with the constitution and their proposal is against the constitution.
How can we support a proposal that’s against the constitution? What kind of time frame are we looking at to finish the integration process?
All parties are responsible for the process not being completed on time. For that reason, timeframe imagined then couldn’t become reality. Now, if we go according to the modality based on the constitution as a guideline, the process will be completed soon.
How soon is that?
This is only one part of the CPA. There’re other parts related to constitution making, restructuring the state, releasing prisoners and withdrawing court cases. All these things should be considered together to reach a conclusion. We’ll have a date once we finish all the processes.
We have one and a half month left before the Constituent Assembly expires on August 31.
The agreement was to produce a first draft of the constitution by then. Will that happen?
Since there was an agreement among the parties, we’re hopeful that the first draft will appear. Speaking as an individual, there’re some unresolved questions. For example, a new constitution must be one with a restructured state. Without restructuring there’s no difference between the new constitution and that of 2047. But that question has been shelved for the last 14 months. There hasn’t been a review on why it’s been shelved. The regulations say that the state restructuring committee will prepare a draft, and there’s a time table for it. To solve remaining disputes, what the constitutional committee did was to create a subcommittee——the dispute resolution subcommittee— but that’s not even in the regulations. It was a mistake to create this subcommittee.
Chairman of the Maoist party Pushpa Kamal Dahal is the leader of this subcommittee, so aren’t the Maoists themselves to blame for this?
We protested the formation of subcommittee until the final hour. Our position was that the focus should be on creating a draft of the constitution. And that disputed issues should be sent to the full House for voting. A unified draft of the constitution could be made immediately after the voting. And we could take it to the people. But the speaker, the chairperson of the constitutional committee, and leaders of parties pushed ahead with the formation of the [dispute resolution] subcommittee. That’s why we should’ve gone to the full House for voting.
Regarding restructuring—what are the key disagreements between the Maoists and Nepali Congress?
They disagree with the report from state restructuring committee.
What about the report?
They don’t want to accept the report. But the fact is that three years have passed and Nepali Congress still hasn’t put forward a concrete proposal on state restructuring.