MEDIA HOUSES SHOULD BE REGISTERED FOR VAT Kathmandu, 21 May: Director General of the Department of Information, Laxmi Bilas Koirala, has said that all media houses of the country should compulsorily be registered in Value Added Tax (VAT), RSS reports.. Koirala said that now they have been preparing to stop providing government facilities to the media houses, which are not registered in VAT. He added the government is going to bring such policy to make the media houses stronger as per times. At an interaction organised by the Journalists' Forum at Damak today, Koirala stressed that media sector should be of scientific standards as the sector is being established as an industry. He further said that now media houses should be made as professional and employment-oriented. Mentioning that problems of media workers working in national media houses and media houses in mofussil are different, Koirala said there was no alternative to implementing the Working Journalists Act compulsorily by media houses. On the occasion, owners of local media houses claimed that they implemented the Act in mofussil, even by facing challenges. Similarly, media workers complained that the press pass distributed by the Department of Information is impractical. The programme was chaired by Chairman of the Forum, Gopal Jhapali. RSS Nnnn TUBE WELL TO EASE VALLEY’S WATER SUPPLY Kathmandu, 21 May: The Kathmandu Upatyaka Khanepani Limited (KUKL) has made final preparations for bringing 12 tubewells into operation in different places in the town to ease the supply of drinking water in winter.According to Spokesperson for Ministry of Urban Development Suresh Acharya, two tubewells have already been operated in Balaju and preparations are over for installing other ten in other places, RSS reports.. Besides, drinking water was being supplied through 16 water tankers daily in the places facing water shortage.There is demand for over 160 million liters of drinking water in the Kathmandu Valley daily and the Limited has managed to supply only over fifty percent of the demand. Nnnn RBB RECORDS RS. 1.03B NET PROFIT Kathmandu, 21 May: Rastriya Banijya Bank (RBB) has earned a net profit of Rs. 1.03 billion in the nine months of current fiscal year 2069-70 BS. This is 55 per cent more than the profit of the corresponding period last year. Similarly, the operational profit in the same period has reached Rs. 610 million, which is 241 per cent more than the last year. The bank's deposit has reached 85.55 billion and loan and debt has reached 45 billion rupees. Likewise, bank's loan deposit ratio is 52.5 per cent and bad debt -total loan ratio is 5.95 per cent. The bank is providing its services in 63 districts through its 142 branch offices. Nnnn SMOOTH CONSTRUCTION OF UPPER TAMAKOSHI Kathmandu, 21 May: Almost half of the construction works of the Upper Tamakoshi Hydropower Project has completed, Laxman writes in The Rising Nepal.. . According to the Project Officials, the constru ction work of the 456 MW project will complete by mid April 2015 as the works are going on smoothly in a full swing. The Upper Tamakoshi Hydropower Project the first project developed with only domestic investment is one of the national pride projects. With the support of the locals and the leaders of the political parties of Dolkha district, the construction works is going on in a high pace and if all goes well, the project will be brought into operation within the targeted deadline of 2015. Bigyan Prasad Shrestha, Acting Project Chief, said 46 per cent of the construction works had completed and the remaining works of the project would be over within the stipulated timeframe if the locals and the concerned bodies keep on providing support to it. He said, “We have succeeded to complete nearly half of the project due to continuous support of the local people, leaders and other concerned agencies. We are greatly encouraged by the support we are receiving to push forward the works.” Although the construction works of the project started some eight years ago, they took a desired pace only from 2011. “Around 60 per cent of tunnel works has been completed till now. We completed works in around 9.5 km of the 16 km tunnel,” he said. It took almost six years to construct a road to the project site, he said and added that the works of the project had moved in a slow pace in the beginning due to various problems. We opened 28.5 km road track to link the project site located in a remote area, he said. “But now, we are not facing any problem except for technical problems, which occur repeatedly and we solve them promptly,” he said. “We are forwarding works of opening the tunnel and building a power house, transformer and dam simultaneously. We hope we will complete the works in time.” The total cost of the project is estimated at Rs. 35.28 billion. Around Rs.12.2 billion was spent in the project by the end of April 2013. Expressing his satisfaction over fund mobilizations for the project, he said that the financial management of the project completed in 2012 even lobbying for the management had begun from 2007. The project received electricity generation license in April 2010. Once it starts generating power, it will earn around Rs.10 billion annually. Around 40 per cent cost was saved in the construction of the tunnel by now, he said, however, the cost may vary as it is a mega project. Bimal Gurung, assistance manager of the project, hoped that the local people would continue to provide their support so that the construction works would complete within the fixed deadline and the people would feel a sigh of relief from the problem of power outage. Load shedding hour will be reduced by 4 hours a day in the dry season after the completion of the project, he said. He said, “The model of this project is appropriate to carry the works in a high speed. If other projects are developed in this model, their construction works will also complete in the stipulated timeframe.” Of the total investment, Rs. 10 billion was from the Employees Provident Fund, Rs 6 billion from the Nepal Telecom; Rs. 2 billion each from Citizen Investment Trust and Rastriya Bima Sansthan and remaining Rs. 11 billion would be bore by the government. Similarly, Nepal Electricity Authority has 41 per cent share in it, Nepal Telecom 6 per cent, Citizen Investment Trust 2 per cent, Rastriya Bima Sansthan 2 per cent, Employment Provident Funds 24 per cent, 10 per cent for the people of Dolakha district and 15 per cent for general people. Some 1450 individuals including 450 Chinese nationals are working in the project as the civil works of the project are being carried out by Sino Hydro, a Chinese company. nnnn