INOCULATION MEASLES, RUBELLA Kathmandu, 14 Dec.: Altogether 5.54 million children from nine months to 15 years are being inoculated against measles and rubella in a moth-long progrmme from Friday. covering 35 of the country’s 75 districts. Vaccination will be administered at schools, ward offices and health institutions. Nnnn SHANKATA PLAYS NRT IN FOOTBALL LEAGUE Kathmandu, 14 Dec.: Shankata plays NRT in Martyrs Memorial Memorial A Division Football League Championship at Dashrath Rangashala Friday. Madhayur meets RCT I another match. nnnn SECOND SUCCESSIVE VICTORY FOR APF Kathmandu,14 Dec.: : Nepal APF Club beat Region-VI (Baitadi) by by 111 runs Thursday in national cricket tournament/ The win was the second successive for the APF. Region-II (Birgunj) beat Region-V (Nepalgunj) by 39 runs in another match. nnnn. KANGAROO COURTS OF PEOPLE’S WAR ERA ILLEGAL SAYS COURT Kathmandu, 14 Dec.; In yet another blow to the present government, the Supreme Court (SC) on Thursday directed the government not to take any decision to legalize conflict-era property transactions carried out by then Maoists´ “people´s government”, Republica reports. Responding to a writ petition filed by a group of advocates affiliated to the Democratic Lawyers´ Association (DLA), a full bench of justices Ram Kumar Prasad Shah, Girishchandra Lal and Sushila Karki stated that the decisions taken by then Maoists´ “people´s government” were illegal. However, the apex court scraped the writ petition stating that the government has already decided not to implement the decision to legalize conflict-era property transactions. Earlier, a single bench of Chief Justice Khil Raj Regmi on January 19 had issued a stay order against the government´s controversial decision. Stating that the case was of public importance and a complex one, the chief justice had also ordered the apex court to bring the case before a full bench. A cabinet meeting on January 12 had decided to legalize conflict-era property transactions carried out by then Maoists´ “people´s government”. Following protests from the opposition parties in parliament, the government on February 15 withdrew its decision and decided to resolve the problem through political consensus. However, the committee has not been formed even 10 months after the cabinet decision. Then Maoists´ “people´s government” had taken the decisions related to property transactions when Baburam Bhattarai was the chief of then Maoists´ “people´s government”. Advocate Biswas Acharya, among other lawyers affiliated with the DLA, on January 17 had filed the writ petition stating that the cabinet decision was illegal. Nnnn GOVT. ADOPTS AUSTERITY MEASURES Kathmandu,14 Dec.: The government has barred all ministries and government agencies from procuring vehicles, tightened foreign visits and also frozen about half a dozen distributive programs in a bid to make sure the money appropriated in the annual budget is sufficient for the fiscal year, Republica reports. “No agencies can buy new vehicles from the budget allocated from government´s own sources. Programs like ´development based on people participation´, ´Karnali and surrounding area development program´ and ´backward Tarai-Madhesh special program´ too have been frozen,” said a senior official at the Ministry of Finance (MoF). Likewise, in a bid to tighten spending, the government has also instructed all the government agencies to compulsorily acquire MoF´s prior approval while sending any official to foreign trip, study, overseas training, and seminar and workshops, among others. The MoF has already issued circular to all government offices to inform them about the decisions. “They have been sternly instructed to adhere to this instruction; flouting it will draw stringent action,” the official said. The government took a decision to this regard mainly after the budget announced amid political gridlock compelled it to limit spending for this fiscal year to Rs 351.76 billion -- an amount that is equal to what it spent in actual in the last fiscal year. “Given the inflation, this amount is certain to fall short to finance even the last year´s programs. Hence, we had to resort to these measures,” said the MoF official. The government was compelled to adopt those measures also because owing to the necessity to make new allocations for fresh elections of the CA and establishment of the new secretariat in the Nepal Army for integrating Maoist combatants, it has not allotted to the ministries even the amounts that they actually spent in the last fiscal year. “Ministries this year have received budgets less by 12 to 28 percent from their last year´s actual spending. This is a pretty tight situation; unless prudently managed, the ministries will face serious financial problems in the days to come,” the official said. While the situation clearly required the government to tighten spending, officials added the programs that have been frozen like ´development based on people participation´, ´Karnali and surrounding area development program´ and ´backward Tarai-Madhesh special program´ were meager distributive programs that aimed to serve political purposes of the ministers rather than making real contribution to the development of those areas or communities. By freezing those programs, the government has generated spare money of more than a billion rupees. Through such measures and seeking the ministries to drop low priority development programs, the government has set aside additional Rs 7 billion for holding elections and another Rs 3 billion for urban road expansion. “These funds have been kept under the ´miscellaneous´ heading,” according to the official. The government has also separately allocated about Rs 3 billion each for holding elections and setting the new army secretariat. Though the MoF has restricted ministries from procuring new vehicles from its allocations, officials clarified it, however, has allowed them to buy vehicles if the development projects that they are executing have separate donors´ allocations for such purchases. “In order to make sure such procurement is already in the donors´ commitments, we have asked all the agencies to get our approval compulsorily before moving ahead with the procurement,” said the source. Nnnn ATTEMPT TO CURB SOCIAL SECURITY ALLOWANCE Kathmandu, 14 Dec.: ter rampant misuse of social security funds in local bodies, the Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development (MoFALD) is planning to introduce new laws to streamline the distribution of social security funds and curb its misuse in districts, The Himalayan Times reports.. “The government will formulate new laws to take action against the culprits and discourage the misuse of the government funds,” said high-ranking officials at the MoFALD. According to the ministry, Rs 8.5 billion was allocated for 2.1 million beneficiaries across the country in the last fiscal. The beneficiaries include elderly citizens, widows, marginalised children, disappearing ethnics and disabled people. It is reported that a huge amount of social security funds was misused in the local bodies through allocation of funds in the name of dead people without updated data. According to two separate monitoring teams from the MoFALD, more than Rs 300 million meant for security funds was misused in Dhanusha and Saptari districts each. The MoFALD sought clarification with 22 officials and suspended 18 in Dhanusha while eight officials including four VDC secretaries and four technicians were suspended in Saptari. The ministry has forwarded files to the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority for further investigation. “ We are planning to monitor the distribution of funds to discourage corruption of social security allowances in the districts,” said Shanta Bahadur Shrestha, secretary at the MoFALD. According to Shrestha, the monitoring will be extended to other districts gradually. “We are also planning to assess the local bodies with the new guidelines,” said Shrestha adding that the existing rules will be incorporated with the new one. There are 75 districts, 3,915 VDCs and 58 municipalities across the country. At least Rs 500 is given under the social security fund to each of the 2.1 million beneficiaries every month. The government allocates about Rs 45 billion for the local bodies every year. This budget does not include the budget allocated for education and health sectors. Nnnn DIFFERENCES REMAIN ON CONSENSUS Kathmandu, 14 Dec.: Consensus has become a chimera for Nepal’s political parties, and of late ‘a package deal’ has kept ruling coalition and opposition parties apart. Reasons are but obvious: The ruling and opposition parties have their own interpretations of a package deal and its contents, Ram Kumar Kamat writes in The Himlayan Times.. The ruling Unified CPN-Maoist and the United Democratic Madhesi Front are seeking opposition’s commitment to all the agreed agendas of the dissolved Constituent Assembly such as republicanism, secularism, inclusion, judiciary, forms of governance and election representation system. “Besides, an agreement on CA poll date, removing legal and constitutional hurdles for the polls, filling vacancies in constitutional bodies, including in the judiciary, determination of the percentage of first-past-the-post election, proportional representation system, reduction of CA seats and formation of a national consensus government are also the issues that need to be included in the package deal,” said UCPN-M Spokesman Agni Sapkota. But UML leader Pradip Gyawali said his party has never hesitated to take the ownership of the agreed agendas of the dissolved CA. “Some leaders of the Nepali Congress say they cannot take ownership of the agreed agendas because doing that, they say, will curtail the rights of the sovereign CA. We do not agree with them,” said Gyawali. NC has a different take though. NC leader Ram Sharan Mahat said his party was ready to agree on major issues like republicanism, secularism and federalism. “But how can we agree on all issues now? It will be an infringement of CA’s mandate. If we have to agree on all issues, then why should there be an election for the CA?” questioned Mahat. The UCPN-M and UDMF say they want opposition’s commitment to issues of constitution because they do not want to see the new CA fail again. “We have heard opposition leaders saying federalism is not their agenda. If the CA fails again, it will fit to their scheme, and they can then push for the formation of a commission,” said Sadbhawana Party Co-Chairman Laxman Lal Karna. Prior to CA elections, the UCPN-M, which feared that NC and UML might drag their feet to declare the country a republic, had forced them to incorporate the provision of abolishing the monarchy from the first meeting of CA in the constitution. “Opposition parties have failed to embrace the changes. Empowerment of marginalised communities is not their agenda. Therefore, we fear that if they do not commit to the agreed agendas now, they can reverse the wheel of change later,” said Sapkota. UDMF has its own concerns on federalism, the only major issue that proved to be most contentious in the dissolved CA. “We want the next CA to choose one model out of three — the 14-, 10- and six-pradesh models that were the property of the dissolved CA,” said Jitendra Dev, Spokesperson, Madhesi Janaadhikar Forum-Nepal. The package deal, he added, should also include the provision of either granting citizenship to those whose names figured in 2008 voter list or enabling them to vote in the next election without voter identity card. “We can even boycott the next election if the voter list issue is not resolved,” he said. He added that although parties had agreed to have 240 FPTP seats, Madhesi parties can lobby for five more FPTP seats as per the percentage of Madhes population mentioned in the new census data. nnnn