SEVEN ORDINANCES BEING SENT TO PRESIDENT FOR PROMULGATION AMID SHOWDOWN BETWEEN SHEETAL NIWASSS, SINGHA DURBAR Kathmandu, 23 Aug.: Government is sending seven ordinances .to President Dr. Ram Baran Yadav for promulgation after approval by cabinet Thursday by a regular meeting. Health Minister Rajendra Mohoto said the ordinances are essential to run the government. One ordinance relates to the appointment of persons to constitutional bodies where positions have not been filled for years because of lobbying by parties to nominate lackeys. Seven ordinances are being sent to the ceremonial president amid a direct confrontation between Sheetal Niwas and Singha Durbar after the head of state Dr. Yadav returned two election-related ordinances after a national vote was not going to be conducted 22 November. The president and the government are on a collision course. Government and Maoists wanted the ordinances to be promulgated to go for elections any time keeping the initiative to announce elections and keave the opposition unprepared. The avowed purpose was to get a two-third majority to enforce a constitution of their choioce for which the party has developed a 21-party front already. Maoist Chairman Prachanda has publicly announced his party’s aim is to impose a communist system and will stay in power for the next 25 years. nnnn . SUPREME COURT STAYS ARMY RECRUITMENT Kathmandu, 23 Aug.: The Supreme Court today [Wednesday] stayed Nepal Army’s process to recruit 81 officer cadets (66 through open competition and 15 under reservation Category}, Ram Kumar Kamat writes in The Himalayan Times.. A single bench of Justice Tahir Ali Ansari issued the interim order to this effect in response to a writ petition filed by Nand Kishor Yadav of Sitapur VDC, Siraha. Yadav himself is one of the applicants. Naming the Prime Minister’s Office, Ministry of Defence, NA’s Directorate of Recruitment, and Public Service Commission as defendants, Yadav in his petition filed yesterday had claimed that ‘the Interim Constitution guarantees right to social justice (Article 13) and right to employment (Article 18)’ and demanded apex court intervention. Besides, the petitioner had demanded that the apex court order the defendants to reopen the vacancy for 15 seats under reservation category, said Yadav’s lawyer Dipendra Jha. The next hearing is scheduled for September 2. NA had sought applications from interested candidates on March 29 and the results of the written exam were published on July 25. According to Jha, there were some Madhesis among the 3,360 applicants who had cleared the IQ test conducted by the NA. “But there was not even a single Madhesi among 356 applicants passing the written test,” said Jha. Yadav himself had cleared the IQ test but had failed in the written test. “When NA seeks to recruit under both open and reservation categories, there should be competition among the equals, not among the unequals,” said Jha. “For 15 seats under reservation quota, NA should have conducted a separate competition exam for Madhesi applicants only. NA did not do it.” When asked to respond, NA Spokesman Brig Gen Ramindra Chhetri said he was not in a position to comment as his office was yet to receive the text of the judgment. “As far as the selection process in NA is concerned, all the applicants must pass all the required tests. Once the applicants applying under reservation quota pass the required tests, they are qualified for selection from among their groups,” said Chhetri. NA is one of the state organs with abysmally low representation of Madhesi youth. One of the points in the four-point dead that the Unified CPN-Maoist signed with the United Democratic Madhesi Front before the formation of the Baburam Bhattarai-led government had mentioned that ‘the government would immediately initiate the process to ensure representation of Madhesis in the army. nnnn BANGLADESH, PAKISTAN WORKERS IS MALAYSIA HOLD NEPALI PASSPORTS Kathmandu, 23 Aug.: In a startling revelation, a high-level probe into jobs in Malaysia has found a large number of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis working in the security sector there--an exclusively preserve of Nepali citizens-- through the use of hand-written Nepali passports that have been tampered with, Prabhakar Ghimere writes in Republica. . Worse still, the probe team reckons that multiple groups, including Nepali manpower agencies, Nepali agents in Malaysia, workers themselves and human resource (HR) managers of employer companies, were jointly operating a racket selling the ´photo-altered´ passports of Nepalis to Bangladeshi and Pakistani workers for a huge ´fee´. These passsports enable them to land jobs in the security sector that provides lucrative salaries in this second biggest destination country for Nepali workers. The probe team comprising high-ranking officials from the Ministry of Labor and Employment (MoLE) and a representative of Nepali manpower agents recently completed a week-long visit to Malaysia. “It is a serious matter that a growing number of Nepali hand-written passports fall into the hands of foreign job seekers, especially Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. This could pose a security threat both in Malaysia and Nepal if the passports are used for criminal purposes,” a member of the team told Republica. The team member said Nepal will incur a heavy cost in lost job opportunities in Malaysia if the trend remains unchecked. “The government has to give high priority to converting existing hand-written passports into MRP to end the risk of passport misuse,” said the member. “A growing number of Nepali passports are being sold to Bangladesh and Pakistani workers who offer up to Rs 300,000 per passport to land jobs in the security sector, which is more lucrative than other jobs in Malaysia,” Kumud Khanal, vice-president of Nepalese Association of Foreign Employment Agencies (NAFEA), told Republica on Wednesday. Around 60,000 Nepalis are employed as security guards in Malaysia, which has received some 773, 940 Nepali works by the end of fiscal year 2011/12. The Malaysian government has approved a job quota of 10,000 in the security sector for Nepali youths this year. Khanal said the passport misuse will harm the reputation of Nepalis in the Malaysian job market if the passport users become involved in heinous crimes. “Foreign workers (Pakistanis, Bangladesh) are buying Nepali passports to work at security agencies. This trend not only puts at risk our exclusive privilege in the security sector but poses a serious risk of the passports landing in the hands of criminals,” said Khanal. There is no exact data on how many Nepali handwritten passports are sold in Malaysia to workers from the two south Asian countries after altering the photos. Recently, Datuk Shaheen Mirza Habib of Security Service Association of Malaysia- an umbrella organization of Malaysian security agencies- voiced serious concern over the growing incidence of Nepali passport misuse. Khanal, who has been supplying workers to Malaysia, also opined that the government has to encourage passport holders to converts their handwritten documents into MRP so that the still widely used manual passports do not end up in the wrong hands. He said the government has to immediately set a timeline to convert all handwritten passport into MRP and mobilize all its agencies, including Nepali missions abroad, for this purpose. nnnn ________________________________________ SC VERDICT ON PRIVATE SCHOOLS IMPRACTICAL Kathmandu, 23 Aug.: The Supreme Court (SC) appears to have come down hard on private sector education in a year-long case on regulating fees at private schools and colleges and the sale of unapproved and expensive books to students on school premises, Niranjan Sharma writes in Republica.. However, the latest verdict directing government agencies to implement an ll-point order to the private sector does not seem to give any respite to students or guardians either. Guardians have applauded the SC decision, saying that the Department of Education (DoE) and District Education Offices (DEO) should implement the verdict aggressively in order to give students and parents a sense of positive change. The Private and Boarding Schools Organization (PABSON) says that the SC verdict is not practical. However, Suprabhat Bhandari, president of Guardians´ Association Nepal, said, “The apex court has rightly pointed out the flaw in the education system in directing the monitoring mechanism to take immediate action.” Expressing doubt about the intention of government officials to deal with the issue, Bhandari said, “The latest verdict has also paved the way for DoE and DEO to directly scrap the licenses of educational institutions charging fees illegally and flouting government guidelines on textbooks.” Meanwhile, PABSON Chairman Baburam Pokharel challenged the apex court order on fee hikes at three-year intervals only. “We will not increase the salaries of the teachers and staff if the SC wants us to stop fee hikes for the next three years,” Pokharel said adding “The SC order cannot stop the price inflation in all sectors.” Pokharel claimed that the SC order to charge Rs 25 for admission forms and Rs 100 as admission fee would be impossible for them to implement. The amounts would be appropriate for community schools only. Currently, some private schools charge up to Rs 20,000 as admission fee at primary level though the government has sanctioned a maximum charge of Rs 2,500 even at secondary level. A report issued by DoE in 2010 found that over 40 percent of private schools and colleges were charging fees above the DoE recommendation. There are around 10,000 private schools in the country, including 1,300 in the Valley. As per data available at the Higher Secondary Schools Association Nepal, 400 private colleges in the Valley charge Rs 100,000 to 180,000 in fees at the humanities, management and science faculties. Standing on the SC full verdict issued on Sunday, DoE Director Tek Narayan Pandey warned the private sector to either follow the verdict or pack their bags and try their luck in some other business. “The apex court has specifically mentioned that private sector education has been cheating students and parents on the pretext of providing quality education,” said Pandey. “DoE can directly scrap the licenses of such institutions, which are flouting DoE and DEO directives on charging fees that are fair and use of textbooks approved by the Curriculum Development Centre.” Responding to PABSON´s reaction that the SC verdict was impractical, Pandey further said that government offices are all set to implement the order. “It is an order from the apex court... private sector education can try its hand in some other business if it cannot follow the rules.” A writ petition filed by a group of advocates--Shree Krishna Subedi, Kapil Pokharel and Rabin Subedi -- last year argued that the majority of private schools were defying the law while charging fees and selling non-approved books. The court on April 29 last year also asked the authorities to give it within the first week of every month a monitoring report on the status of fees charged in private schools and the books taught there. Nnnn CENTRAL BANK REVISES DIRECTIVES Kathmandu, 23 Aug.: The central bank has revised the rules regarding provisioning of third party collateral loans after its rules caused quite a stir in the banking Community, The Himalayan Times reports. Issuing a circular, Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) said that financial institutions need not provision 20 per cent extra on loans with third party collateral for the current fiscal year. In the Unified Directives for the current fiscal year, NRB had made 20 per cent extra provisioning for such loans with third party collateral mandatory, which was opposed by banks and mostly by construction companies. “This provision was meant to discourage the practice of pledging collateral of anyone to get loans which has landed a large number of people in trouble, but since people were confused, NRB felt the need to revise it,” said spokesperson for NRB Bhaskar Mani Gyanwali. Likewise, the central bank has also tweaked the regulation regarding 100 per cent provisioning of the loans forwarded for the repayment of Trust Receipt (TR) loans which was highly opposed by the banks and importers. According to the new provision of the central bank, banks need not provision 100 per cent for the loans that are meant to repay for TR loans if the borrowers get such loans accepted beforehand while getting letter of credit (LC) issued for the imports. “Trust Receipt loans are usually provided for imports through letter of credit, but if the situation does not allow the borrower to repay the loan within 120 days then they can take loans before getting a LC to pay for the imports,” pointed out Gyanwali. In addition, issuing the circular, the central bank has also allowed financial institutions to carry out tasks of Central Depository System’s Depository Participants. A Depository Participant maintains a dematerialised account for investors who hold their securities in an electronic format. nnnn