APPELLATE COURT JUDGE RESIGNS Kathmandu, 10 May: Appellate court justice Komalnath Sharma has ben relieved of his duties, Nagarik reports. Chief Justice Khil Raj Regmi Wednesday informed concerned agencies of the judge’s resignation. The judge cleared former communication minister Jayaprakash Prasad Gupta of corruption charge by CIAA. nnnn RECORD FOOD PRODUCTION TO PUSH ECONOMY Kathmandu, 10 May: Nepal is expected to record an all-time high production of food grain of over 9.457 million tonnes in fiscal 2011-12, driven mainly by higher output of paddy, wheat and maize, Sangam Parsain writes in The Kathmandu Post. The record output will give the country a food surplus of 600,000 tonnes. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, annual cereal production is expected to increase by almost 10 percent in the current fiscal year. Out of the total production, the output of summer crops — paddy, maize, millet and buckwheat — is expected to jump 13.72 percent, 5.4 percent, 4.08 percent and 13.34 percent respectively. The output of winter crops — wheat and barley — is estimated to grow 5.7 percent and 14.9 percent respectively. “Timely monsoons and winter rain along with the distribution of improved seeds have helped the country to achieve an all-time high food output this year,” said Hari Dahal, spokesperson at the Agriculture Ministry. Fewer natural disasters, according to Dahal, also contributed to the bumper harvest. This year, only 15,017 hectares of farmland were affected by natural disasters. Even though the area under cereal production grew a mere 0.2 percent, output surged 9.6 percent. This year, food crops were grown on 3.48 million hectares. The ministry said that the contribution of food grain to the Agriculture Gross Domestic Production (AGDP) has increased to 36.36 percent. National Planning Commission (NPC) vice-chairman Dipendra Bahadur Kshetry said that increased output would push the country’s economic growth besides assuring good supply in the market and helping to control food inflation. “Adequate food supplies will keep prices down which are still very high,” Kshetry said. Despite the potential of the agriculture sector, Kshetry said that the government still had been neglecting it. “We still have to ensure irrigation among other extensions and research in the agro sector for its sustainability,” he added. Economist Bishamber Pyakurel said that the increased output could control the uncertainty of food prices in the market to some extent. The impact of the rise in production is likely to be visible in the market later. “However, if the government fails to monitor and regulate food prices, the growth in output will not have any significant impact in the market,” Pyakurel said. Economists said that the boost in production might cheer the government and the traders, particularly middlemen, but it has nothing to offer to the producers. As the government does not procure agro products from the farmers, all the benefits are enjoyed by the middlemen (who fix the prices of the commodities). nnnn PM UNHAPPY WITH PROGRESS IN PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION Kathmandu, 10 May: Almost all mega and medium-sized infrastructure projects touted as National Pride Projects (NPPs) are not making the desired level of progress, concluded the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) on Wednesday, ANilGiri writes in The Kathmandu Post. A four-hour meeting chaired by Chief Secretary Madhav Ghimire and attended by secretaries of the PMO and other line ministries reviewed the progress of these projects and took note the status of implementation. Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai had listed around a dozen of infrastructure projects as ‘national pride’ in the Immediate Action Plan (IAP) unveiled in the last week of January. “We found problems and glitches in every project during the review,” said PMO Secretary Lila Mani Poudel. The report card of the Melamchi Water Supply Project is among the worst, said a PMO official. “In Melamchi’s case, the poor performance of the contractor is making the progress sluggish and the land acquisition process is also not making good headway,” said Poudel. The Upper Tamakoshi Hydroelectricity Project (UTHEP) is also facing serious management crisis which has hampered the preparation of the detailed project report (DPR). The UTHEP board meeting has not taken place since February 23. The Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) recently appointed Sunil Kumar Dhungel as the project director, but the board is yet to approve the decision. The parliamentary Public Accounts Committee on Tuesday directed the chairman of the UTHEP board to convene the meeting within seven days and expedite the project as per the planned schedule. Expected to be completed by March 2015, work on UTHEP, one of the country’s most prioritised projects, has been obstructed time and again due to several factors. The government, in the action plan, had said it would invite international investors to develop the Kathmandu-Tarai Fast Track, a second international airport and the East-West Electric Train under the Build-Own-Operate-Transfer (BOOT) model. However, not much progress has been achieved on this front. The East-West Electric Railway Project has been facing a severe resource crunch. The action plan’s target of completing the track opening of the Kathmandu Tarai Fast Track and Mid-Hill Highway within this fiscal year looks almost impossible as both the projects are running behind the schedule. The Nepal Army (NA) has been carrying out the track opening work of the much talked-about Fast-Track project for the last two years and has so far completed opening 40 km track out of 76 km. A parliamentary sub-committee formed to probe alleged irregularities in the track opening has expressed satisfaction about the output against cost, but questioned non-transparency. Sikta Irrigation Project is the one which is making satisfactory progress, according to the PMO. As far as the 750-MW West Seti Hydro Project is concerned, not much headway has been made after the government signed the memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the China Three Gorges International. The Energy Ministry and Investment Board are at loggerheads over the project even after the Prime Minister instructed the ministry to hand over the project to the board. Almost all projects are suffering from the unavailability of petroleum, poor performance of contractors, lack of resources and management crisis. “Our conclusion is that we might not have that efficiency required to execute large and medium-sized projects. Our mechanisms might have serious shortfall of expertise,” said a secretary taking part at the meeting. “Given the sluggish pace of execution, almost all these projects will not meet deadline.” The PMO will issue directives to the line ministers to expedite project work to meet the set target. “The PMO will instruct the executing agencies, line ministries and the Ministry of Finance to inject necessary budget to the cash-strapped projects, prioritise land acquisition, improve managerial capability of contractors and enhance the overall execution skills of the projects,” said the secretary. nnnn HEALTH MINISTRY PRESENTS TO CABINET HUMAN RESOURCE PLAN Kathmandu, 10 May:: The Ministry of Health and Population is working to table Human Resource for Health Strategic plan (2011-2015) at the Cabinet soon, officials said, Laxmi Maharjan writes in The Himalayan Times.. The ministry has prepared the strategic plan to guide the production, recruitment, deployment, development, retention, monitoring and evaluation of human resource in the health sector. Kabiraj Khanal, joint spokesperson for the ministry, said the government started formulating the strategic plan after Nepal Health Sector Programme-Implementation Plan-II identified a number of challenges and constraints affecting the delivery of health services. “The ministry is giving finishing touches to the plan,” said Khanal. In 2010, the health ministry established a country coordination and facilitation mechanism and began developing a new and updated human resource strategic plan to address some of the long-standing problems. The plan has identified five problem areas and issues: imbalance between supply and demand, poor distribution of health staff, poor performance (productivity, quality and availability), fragmented approach to planning, management and development and financing. The strategic plan has envisioned improvement in human resource planning for the health sector and effective and timely recruitment and deployment. Policymakers believe that the plan would make health sector jobs attractive. The plan document further said that the ministry will review current situation and ensure deployment systems result in equitable distribution of health workers and make jobs/postings in rural areas more attractive. As per the strategic plan, the ministry will also prepare and support staff better for working and living in remote areas and make mandatory provisions for service to improve rural service. The ministry will also continue identifying new areas for task shifting and alternative staffing in clinical areas and use NGOs and private health providers for service delivery in rural areas. One of the challenges to delivering the health service is absenteeism among health workers. The plan aims to reduce absence of staff from their assigned posts and ensure effective coordination at all levels within the health system. Figures from the ministry show that of the 78,000 civil servants employed by the government, approximately 31,500 (40 per cent) are employed by the health ministry. Khanal said staffing has not kept up with population growth. While the population grew by 45 per cent between 1991 and 2011, number of people involved in the health sector increased only by 3.4 per cent in the same period. Nepal currently has 0.042 doctors per 1,000 population. The World Health Organisation recommends 2.3 doctors per 1,000 population. The WHO in 2006 categorised Nepal as a country with ‘critical shortage’ of human resource in the health sector. Khanal added that the strategic plan will address decentralisation issues at a time when the country is heading towards federalism. nnnn PM SEEKS PRESIDENTIAL SUPPORT FOR NA RESTRUCTURE Kathmandu, 10 May: Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai has revealed his intention to implement the army restructuring plan despite directive from the State Affairs Committee of the parliament to put the plan on hold for the time being, and has sought support from President Ram Baran Yadav to implement the plan, Republica reports. On Wednesday, he met the president to brief on his efforts to give full shape to the cabinet and the government´s initiatives to forward the constitution writing process, but raised the restructuring plan during the meeting. Bhattarai had met Yadav on Tuesday to specifically discuss the plan. "The prime minister argued before the president that restructuring of the army falls within the jurisdiction of the executive," said Rajendra Dahal, president´s press advisor. In response, the president, who is the supreme commander of the national army, said although the restructuring of the national army was the jurisdiction of the government, such a move required consensus among political parties. He told the prime minister to implement the restructuring plan in the spirit of the constitution and by garnering consensus among political parties," said Dahal. On Tuesday SAC said any restructuring of the army required political consensus as required by the Interim Constitution and the Comprehensive Peace Accord. The Article 144 (3) of the Interim Constitution states the cabinet will prepare and enforce a detailed action plan on the democratization of the Nepal Army after garnering political understanding and getting suggestions from concerned committees of the parliament. nnnn