Govt blamed for keeping ‘ill intention’ to distributing money to former Maoist combatants

KATHMANDU : The government’s decision to distribute Rs 200,000 to each of the disqualified former Maoist combatants has invited wide criticism from various fronts of the society.

The National Youth Federation (NYF) Nepal has demanded the government to annul its decision. Launching a protest on Saturday, the sister organization affiliated to the CPN-UML, slammed the government decision. The NYF Nepal in this regard burnt the effigy of the Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal.

Earlier, a Cabinet meeting held on March 20 had decided to make a guideline to provide the aforementioned amount to the former combatants. Recently, the Ministry of Home Affairs prepared the guidelines as per the government’s instruction.

Even the political figures affiliated to the coalition government have been expressing their concern over the government exhausting the precious financial resources at the time when the government is struggling to meet its minimum financial obligations.

Finance Minister Prakash Sharan Mahat in a program on Friday said he was unaware of the government decision. Number of lawmakers including Nepali Congress leader Gagan Thapa also expressed their dissatisfaction over the government’s attempts for wasteful use of the state’s resources. They blamed the Maoist leaders just to please their cadres in the name of providing reliefs to the disqualified former combatants.

The United Nations Mission in Nepal had identified a total of 4,009 former Maoist combatants as disqualified. Based on the figure, the state will face a burden of around Rs 1 billion, provided the government plan is materialized.

The government has been struggling to meet its target of revenue collection. While the annual revenue collection target stands at Rs 1.403 billion, only 49.29 percent of the amount was collected as of the first nine months.

Citing the crunch of financial resources, the government has adopted austerity measures to curtail the unproductive expenses of the government offices. The government has even cut 50 percent of the third installment of the financial equalization grants to be provided to the provincial and local governments. With the new decision into effect, the sub-national governments will receive only Rs 23 billion out of Rs 46 billion allocated for the purpose earlier.

The government has decided not to take forward the projects that have not started their preliminary work as of mid-April, affecting over Rs 20 billion projects in pipeline. It has also halted completely releasing funds under 22 sub-heads.

“On one hand, the government announces the expenses cut policy, while it has been breaching its own rule either through rampant budget transfers or the direct distribution of money to its near and dear ones,” said an official of the Ministry of Finance. “At this moment of financial crisis, it is not appropriate that the government itself tends to misuse the fund by rampant distribution of money for political intention.”

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