POET KRISHNA BHUSAN BAL DEAD Kathmandu, 26 June: Poet Krishna Bhusan Bal died while undergoing treatment at a hospital in Biratnagar Monday night. He was admitted to hospital Friday following a brain hemorrhage. He was chairman of Bani Publication. UTILIZATION OF FOREST DEVELOPMENT FUND PRESSED Kathmandu, 26 June: National Planning Commission (NPC) has urged the Ministry of Finance to give permission to the Ministry of Forest to utilize the amount deposited at Forest Development Fund for the works of sustainable development, protection and management of forests, RSS reports. The NPC urged this after the Forest Ministry put its problems at the NPC saying the Finance Ministry did not provide necessary support to spend the amount. According to the report presented by the NPC at the recently held meeting of the National Development Problems Resolution Committee, environmental problems are on the rise due to lack of intra- body coordination on operation and regulation of different mines and industries run in the forest areas. The report stated that more than 100,000 hectares of forest area has been encroached so far. The report said that national objective of maintaining 40 per cent forest area by large and middle scale infrastructure development (road, hydropower,transmission line, canal, among others) operated in the forest area and via the forest areas has faced problems.Suggestions have been given that there is a need of amendment of Forest Act-2049 BS to end evils and aberrations of the forest sector. nnnn KATHAMANDU/HETAUDA TUNNEL PROJECT BENEFICIAL Kathmandu, 26 June: Kush Kumar Joshi, Chairman of the Nepal Purbadhar Bikas Company Limited (NPBCL), said that the construction of the Kathmandu-Kulekhani-Hetauda Tunnel Highway would turn out to be more economical and efficient for the country, The Rising Nepalreports. The NPBCL has set to construct the Tunnel Highway based on a concept of ‘4Ps’ i.e. Public, Private and People Partnership, model. The people living along the highway can also invest in the project. The total cost of the project is estimated around Rs. 20 billion. With the completion of the road, it will take around one hour to reach Hetauda from Kathmandu. There are two to three alternative ways at present to reach Hetauda from Kathmandu. All these roads take around 7-8 hours. According to him, the construction of the highway would save around Rs. 7 billion in the present fuel consumption. Talking to The Rising Nepal, Joshi said that the road would turn a lifeline for the country if it was completed within the stipulated timeframe. He informed that it will take around six months for the detailed feasibility study of the project and around three and a half years to complete the whole project. "The tunnel highway road will come into operation within next three and a half years," said Joshi. He said that the detailed project report would be completed within the next two months. The NPBC shareholders include the Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry, the Federation of Contractors Association of Nepal, Non-resident Nepalis, and 50,000 locals from 26 village development committees of Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Makawanpur districts. The locals would invest Rs 10,000 each in the project, according to the company. Of the total length 50 km of the project, a 3-km long tunnel road will be built between Bhimphedi and Kulekhani in Makawanpur district that can be crossed in three minutes, according to the NPBC. The tunnel stretch alone will need an investment of around Rs 10 billion. Fulbright Consultancy has prepared proposal for the Kathmandu-Hetauda Tunnel Highway. The road was planed to reduce the travel time to Hetauda. Currently, people travelling to Hetauda have to take either the 133-km long Tribhuvan Highway or the Kathamndu-Mugling-Hetauda route that is 227-km long. Once the highway comes into operation, the planned four-lane tunnel highway will serve a daily traffic of 6,000 vehicles. The Tribuvan Highway, which was built 55 years ago under the Government of India’s grant assistance, is used by around 200 vehicles for travelling to Hetauda everyday. Recently, the Ministry of Physical Planning and Works and the NPBCL have signed the preliminary agreement at the presence of Prime Minister Dr. Baburam Bhattarai. nnnn COUPON SYSTEM TO END TEXTBOOK SHORTAGE Kathmandu, 26 June: Headmasters of almost all schools and the education experts of the Mid-western Development Region have suggested that a ‘coupon system’ has to be introduced to stop recurring problems of the short supply of the textbooks across the country, Purusottam Khatri reports in The Rising Nepal from Khalanga, Salyan.. They said that under the "coupon system" the coupons would be distributed to each school across the country in coordination with the concerned district education offices (DEO) for providing the textbooks printed by Janak Educational Material Centre (JEMC) and supplied by Sajha Publications to all schools in time. JEMC is the only one government centre to own up the responsibility of printing school textbooks in large quantities through the government side though the private sector is also printing the books. Officials at JEMC, however, said that they needed a clear direction from the Ministry of Education or the Department of Education to print annually required quantities of textbooks so that it could fulfill the demands of the government as well as community-run schools. Sushil Barma, headmaster of Mangal Prasad Higher Secondary School in Salyan, said that 10 graders of his school were yet to get any text of English while the five graders had no Nepali book. Barma also suggested implementing the coupon system in distributing books so that every school receives the coupons from DEO and the textbooks from the Sajha Publications. Rabindra Sharma, Nepalgunj-based regional chief of JEMC, told The Rising Nepal that in a six-day monitoring in the Mid-western, they found that the region received enough textbooks to meet the demands. However, the students were yet to get all books even two-and-a-half months after the new academic session began. Most schools in the region were especially unable to get textbooks of compulsory Nepali, English and Mathematics and optional subjects. There is a short supply of the books of grade 1, 6, 9 and 10. "By the beginning of new academic session of fiscal year of 2069 B.S, we would likely to meet the demand of textbooks here in Mid-western," Sharma said. According to Sharma, they had so far made their transaction of books of Rs. 14.59 million from grade 1 to 10 from the fiscal year of 2068 Asadh to Asadh 4, 2069 B.S. Within the date, JEMC had so far supplied 36, 40,501 sets of textbooks in the Mid-western region alone. "Somewhere the books have not reached in time and in other places they were dumped unnecessarily," Sharma said. Agents and books sellers found it costlier to transfer the dumped books from one place to another, Sharma added. The current procedure of distributing textbooks and printing textbooks need to be amended. The government should give a clear direction to print specific quantity of textbooks before new academic session begins and Sajha should also be mobilized in an organized way so that students get their books in time, Sharma said. JEMC was accused by Sajha for supplying limited number of textbooks and the local book centres blamed Sajha for not providing the demanded books in time. Officials claim that the greed for more commissions among the distributors lead to the short supply of books every year. nnnn