This might seem
a step removed from our usual banner image. There is more than one way to
report the news and current affairs but sadly reporting the way the BBC, CNN
and other major media institutions did caused more damage and hardship to Nepal
than the earthquake ever did, not to mention the FO travel advise.
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| A regular sight around the KAthmandu Valley during the time of the Black Market |
As a result of
the alleged Indian ‘blockade’ this bus was carrying 30 blue plastic barrels
each containing 60 litres of petrol above possibly 26+ passengers driving the
roads between the capital and the India border. And there were hundreds of
these busses making multiple daily journeys, but hundreds more working normally
and life was going on as normal in the rest of Nepal - that was never
mentioned.
On February 6th
2016, trucks crossed the Birgunj-Raxaul border both from Nepal into India and
from India into Nepal. That was the first time for more than five months that
essential supplies had begun to move between the two countries. Blockades and
disruption in the Terai are not new, in 1990 the last big blockade lasted for
18 months but never has a blockade been
imposed at such a critical time for Nepal as this one just when Nepal was
trying to recover from the 2015 earthquakes and of course way back in 1990
things were very different. Petrol, diesel, and liquid petroleum gas (LPG)
began to reach distribution depots inside of Nepal, yet and only now, at the
beginning of April, is Mr. Average only just seeing any improvement in supply.
Is this the state of things to come?
I have just returned to
Nepal after spending March in the UK. While in Ambleside, just before Easter I
was speaking with staff in a local climbing equipment shop. They had the same
complaint, the press had, in its reporting capacity given out ‘misleading’
information that led to many potential Easter Lakeland visitors assuming that
the whole of the Lake District was under water and making alternative plans. Tourist
numbers were expected to be down.
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| Many people took the opportunity to cash in |
The Smuggler Army,
a band of mostly unemployed poorly educated people living in the Terai were running
the gauntlet for the more powerful, wealthy and unscrupulous men further north.
The sale of bicycles went up as tens of thousands of men, women and children
cycled into India to fill up plastic ‘jerry cans’ at filling stations only to
cycle back into Nepal and onto Bardibas, a small town on the Nepal side of the
border. Here the fuel was loaded onto busses, along with passengers and
transported into Kathmandu, usually in the middle of the night, but as the
black market took hold this ‘smuggling’ became less ‘under-cover’ and you could
regularly see busses piled high with containers of petrol passing through the
main routes of Nepal and the Kathmandu Valley.
In mid-January,
the National Human Rights Commission estimated about 150,000 litres of fuel, almost
a fifth of Nepal’s daily demand in petrol flowed into Nepal daily through the
village of Thori, in Parsa, alone.
The smuggling
was blatantly obvious to all. The Terai zone police office (Rajendra Regmi
spokesman) agedly made a statement acknowledging the police’s blind-eye to the
situation `If the government can’t fulfil its responsibility [of providing
fuel], we don’t want to make people’s lives harder’; just being public spirited
or was there money involved? Now the blockade is over and tankers are again
crossing the border the black market crashed. Yet there was still no fuel in
Kathmandu, why?
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| The supply chain starts here |
Nepal’s thirst for petroleum products is increasing at an alarming rate. In the fiscal year 2004–5, the
Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) imported 76,097 kiloliters of petrol. Ten years
later, this had risen more than threefold, to 287,473 kiloliters. Worth
approximately USD 2.76 billion, the petrol market alone accounts for 14 percent
of the national economy. The import of diesel and liquid petroleum gas tells a
similar story of rapidly rising consumption. This huge market is dominated
by the state-owned NOC, which has a monopoly on the import and distribution of
all petroleum products, which it obtains from the Indian Oil Corporation.
End-users obtain petrol and diesel from a network of approximately 850 petrol
pumps and dealers, both private and state-owned, including those belonging to
security agencies, which fall under the NOC’s regulatory authority.
After the
beginning of the blockade, traffic in Kathmandu, which consumes 50 percent of
all petrol, was initially drastically reduced. But a month into the blockade
and Kathmandu’s familiar traffic jams were back, it was hard to believe that
there was any scarcity in the capital. But smuggled petrol only represented
part of the story. Despite attempts from the ‘Morcha’ to completely halt supplies
through Biratnagar and other entry points, they succeeded only in Birgunj. The
blockade was thus never total, and imports were sufficient to fulfil about a
third of the total petrol demand.
So if the petrol was arriving in Nepal and the
capital where was it all going? Some of the
officially imported petrol went to the public through a rationing system.
Private vehicles periodically received petrol and diesel at the official rate,
cars were allowed 15 litres, motorcycles 4 litres. For most people, this
involved collecting tokens early in the morning and then queuing at petrol
stations for long hours, often the entire day. But not everyone had to wait.
Individuals with sifaris (letters
of recommendations from “higher up,” typically from a ministry) were allowed to
jump the queue.
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| Fuel coming in via the Shabrubesi road via Kerung |
At a police-run petrol
station in Kathmandu, on January 29, the distribution of petrol to 300 queuing
vehicles took over nine hours because additional cars and motorcycles kept
cutting into the first 20 meters of the queue pushing everybody further back
from the pumps.
Tempers frayed but the policeman
in charge simply shrugged his shoulders. “There are so many ministers, as well
as their brothers, sisters, nieces, and nephews. Don’t bother complaining to
the akhtiyar [the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of
Authority]—I can show you a list with hundreds of names of their staff, as well
as their relatives.”
While NOC officially provided
regular fuel to ministers, influential people (under a “VIP quota”), and
schools and hospitals, unofficially, it also supplied aides of the prime
minister, and ministers’ personal secretaries, family and friends. On January
25th, over the course of an hour at NOC headquarters, more than
forty individuals entered the office of the chief of supply and distribution,
and emerged with sifaris letters.
A share of the NOC’s petrol
also found its way into the black market, although it is hard to specify how
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| Domestic flights restricted in Kathmandu |
much but millions of dollars were made by some people from this situation.
Those with NOC ties were able to channel whatever fuel entered Nepal to their
preferred petrol pumps, which then found its way to the black market. In
November, ten stations in Kathmandu were closed on charges of illegally
distributing NOC provided fuel. The chief district officer responsible for the
crackdown, Ek Narayan Aryal, who had previously been awarded by the government
for his integrity, was transferred in early December, allegedly for trying to
rein in the black market.
“It expanded like organized
crime,” Aryal said at a briefing with CIAA officials in November. He reported
that seven petrol pumps had been closed on charges of supplying the black
market, and 82 people were arrested in the Kathmandu district alone.
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| The supply of gas was no easier with long queues |
A small scale black-market
trader in Kathmandu, interviewed in early February, said she received her stock
from a petrol pump in Bardibas. Taxi drivers and rental vehicle operators said
they bought petrol from government agencies, including the police and army. The
managers of large hotels paid an additional, informal, charge on the consignments
they received for their generators. A recent news article claims the NOC’s
distribution list published since the end of the blockage includes petrol pumps
that have been out of operation for years. The refusal of the NOC, a
state-owned monopoly, to share details on how it distributed petrol, diesel,
and cooking gas over the past months of scarcity is a scandal. So is the
apparent inability of the government to take it to task.
Having said all of that there
are good publically spirited filling station owners. The other day I was
driving home on the last fumes of my ‘black’ petrol when my local filling
station owner jumped out in front of me and ushered me through locked gates
onto his forecourt. Five minutes later a tanker arrived and emptied 40,000lt of
petrol into the storage tanks, ‘So back to normal’ I asked. Sadly no ‘Within
two hours our tanks will be dry’ he said. What fuel is arriving in the public sector
is simply not sufficient to quench the thirst of the petroleum thirsty
citizens.
By the time I returned to Kathmandu from my UK visit many of
the fuel supply problems had been addressed and the filling stations were
operating as normal.
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| The large menacing black cloud over Kathmandu on the 28th March |
And now for something totally different – the
weather Nepal is well into Spring now, the first
cuckoos have arrived and the flowers are out in the garden, a selection appear
throughout this newsletter and the Magnolia has bloomed. The monsoon seems like
it isn’t that far away judging by yesterday’s weather. Over the last few days
the weather has been particularly gloomy and heavy with just about all the
domestic flights being cancelled, due to low clouds obliterating the view of even
the northern valley hills normally visible from my office and that is a little
over 4km away. But yesterday, the skies literally turned black, and the wind
produced a dust storm akin to something seen in the Sahara. Trees were
uprooted, plant pots were tossed around, poly-tunnels got ripped and
pedestrians were in danger of getting decapitated by flying corrugated tin
sheets. Then within the hour all was normal again.
No
reporting on Nepal would be complete without mention of Everest.
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| Helicopters involver in the recovery operation in 2014 Everest - nbcnews.com |
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| All the ladders used in the icefall have to be carried in by porters |
Before the expeditions even
reach Base Camp the Nepalese mountain workers are busy with their various
roles, one of the main areas of responsibility is that of fixing the ice fall.
This year the ‘Icefall Doctors’ as they are known have reported that the new
line to the right of the icefall is subjected to new ‘cracks’ and ‘holes’ that
have appeared since the earthquake last season. The boys are facing
difficulties installing the equipment required to make life easier for those
traversing through this difficult and dangerous section of the route. As a
result of the changing conditions on the glacier over the last year more aluminium
ladders are required. More than 40 ladders have already been installed and it
is estimated that this figure could rise to as many as 200 by the time the
route is fixed. A new initiative for this year is to establish a two-way
traffic system, a route for ascent and one for descent. This is to avoid the
hold-ups and to lessen the time spent in the danger zone from congestion, a
lesson learnt from the Avalanche disaster of 2014.
At the time of
the Avalanche disaster in 2014 and the fallout from the mountaineering industry
in Nepal there was a statement issued by the government indicating that those
expedition members who had been denied the opportunity to ascend Everest might
have their permits extended by 5 years to allow them to use their already
committed financial outlay. Consequently nearly 334 expedition members have had
their permits extended to 2019. However, on February 20th 2016, a
day before the Spring Season was due to commence the Finance Ministry also confirmed
that the Tourism Ministry’s proposal to extend the climbing permits for hundreds
more mountaineers who had been forced to abandon their expeditions in 2015 due to the April 25th
earthquake not only on Everest but also on other peaks in Nepal would have
their permits extended by two years, this included 801 individuals 265 of them
were Everest permits. At present the Department of Tourism has fixed the
Everest permit at 11,000 US $ while other permits vary accordingly. Of course
there are many other costs involved in climbing any of the mountains in Nepal.
So far, as of
the time of writing March 26th, three expeditions have already left
Kathmandu for Everest Base Camp and their acclimatization while another is
about to depart for Lhotse. Up to the date of writing, the Department of
Tourism has received applications from 24 expeditions comprising 206
mountaineers seeking permits for Everest this season. This includes a 14-member
NCC Girls Indian Everest Expedition and more than 60 army personnel from
different countries. One of the largest Nepalese operators Seven Summits
Trekking has 12 expeditions this season, five to Everest while others will
attempt Makalu, Lhotse, Nuptse, Annapurna and Dhaulagiri. This season the
Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee has placed 76 waste bins along the
Everest trail and Tara Air is accepting the responsibility to ferry the
collected waste from the Khumbu free of charge.
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| Our garden 'springing' into life |
Again the D of T
has said it will have a presence at EBC this season ‘to facilitate world
climbers and to monitor the activities of liaison officers!’
Just in case you
have been on the Moon recently and missed the fact that Prince Harry has visited Nepal. His official visit, to
celebrate the bicentennial anniversary of the diplomatic relationship between
Nepal and Britain lasted five days during which time he completed his well
documented official duties. He then announced that he would stay on an
additional six days to help the charity Team Rubicon, a charity matching
military veterans and first responders to rebuild an earthquake destroyed
school in Lapu VDC-3, Gorkha District, a Western District of Nepal. The Nepalese
are bowled over by the Prince and many are hoping that his presence will kick
start the tourism industry after the recent devastating events. He has
certainly been very vocal in his calls for people to return to Nepal, but only
time will tell if they take his message on board.
A ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ The Peoples’ War’ covered the years February 1996 to November 2006.
However, progress to determine the truth and to make progress in other areas is
slow despite the fact that the Commission was established on the 10th
February 2015 with four objectives.
1. To find and
punish those associated with the grave violation of human rights, 2. To create
an environment for sustainable the peace and reconciliation process to develop.
3. To enable the repatriation of displaced victims. 4. To make recommendations
for legal action against those who were involved in serious offences during the
conflict.
Reconstruction post Earthquake Many people have raised the question
‘What has the Nepalese Government done post earthquake in line with its
commitment to address the state of those made homeless as a result of the April
2015 disaster?’ It was reported on the 29th March by
Southasia.com.au that a delegation of German parliamentarians had held meetings
in Nepal with Nepalese stakeholders and as a result had made the most direct
criticism so far of the lack of progress to attend to the needs of the nation.
The German delegation completed a five-day tour of those areas worst hit to
assess reconstruction and rehabilitation activities. Germany had pledged 30million
Euros in grant assistance to Nepal. An Australian parliamentarian had also
raised similar issues.
It is understood that the German delegation also met with
the National Reconstruction Authority but only to
Even the Nepali
Times published a satirical comment on the state of Nepali politics on the 24th
March – ‘It seems Nepal’s enduring time
warp, once rather charming and quaint has endured far too long, nurtured by an
elite that’s neither willing nor able to change with the times. Worse still,
after so many years of abysmal governance this appears almost normal.
Readers don’t need the Hand of any other alien meddler to tell them Nepal has been hijacked by a coterie of highly incompetent individuals who, for all their self-importance and elevated stature locally, would be laughed off the political stage elsewhere. The dysfunction that’s become the local norm here is considered totally unacceptable in most other places.
Readers don’t need the Hand of any other alien meddler to tell them Nepal has been hijacked by a coterie of highly incompetent individuals who, for all their self-importance and elevated stature locally, would be laughed off the political stage elsewhere. The dysfunction that’s become the local norm here is considered totally unacceptable in most other places.
Relief agencies and major donors are also getting impatient with the
excuses and delays put forward by the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA).
They are surprised that instead of concentrating on speedy implementation, the
Authority wants to convene another donor conference and work on a 5-year
reconstruction plan. Of the 4.1billion US $ pledged at the International
Conference of Nepal’s Reconstruction last June, 860million US $ is committed,
but none of that money has been spent. There was a great deal of optimism when
the new CEO was appointed because of his reputation of being an ‘achiever’. But
one of his first actions after taking over was to announce a competition for
the Authority’s logo. This month it was reported that employees would in retrospect,
receive double their current allowances. Being a political appointee, the CEO
is facing opposition from the bureaucracy, as many competent civil servants
have refused to join the Authority because he is their junior. It is estimated
that the office needs at least 208 staff, but has hired only 60 so far.
To add to
the woes of many the Deputy
Prime Minister and Minister for Women Children and Social Welfare has
unilaterally decided to block the bank accounts of the National Disabled Fund
(NDF) and has also stopped all the services provided to the people who were
rendered physically disabled by the earthquake and the decade-long armed
conflict. Nitesh Kumar Gupta, chairman of the NDF, has also blocked the
salaries of the staff. (11th March 2016 Kathmandu Post).
On March 8th, 2016 it was reported
that the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) stated that the reconstruction
of earthquake-ravaged houses would not be completed before the monsoon 2016
(the earthquake occurred on 25th April 2015).
Does the Nepali Leadership have its
Priorities Right?
Despite Nepal’s financial situation on March 21st,
2016, and ignoring suggestions from various quarters including the Prime
Minister’s Office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Prime Minister KP Sharma
Oli left for China on Sunday, leading a 98-member delegation of Nepalese ministers,
secretaries, lawmakers, businessmen and journalists. The Chinese side had said
it would extend hospitality to 11 officials however the PM did not listen to either
the Chinese, or his political advisors. Many officials such as ministers, MPs
and Chief Secretary Somlal Subedi, who do not contribute substantially to the
visit’s success, were included in the team.
The visit will
cost Nepal Rs150 million rupees, approximately 1,500,000 US $. What could that
achieve in Nepal’s present situation?
Monitoring and
Accountability Thomas
Bell recently wrote a piece for Al Jazeera questioning the way in which INGOs
were delivering their services but maybe not following up on monitoring the
outcomes. Many INGO/NGOs exist with the goal to alleviate poverty, human
suffering, improving education and health but in the face of statistics showing
mixed outcomes, is this, their very existence, in fact, the most important
question an International NGO should be asking of themselves? Many
organisations have restructured to try to partially address the issue and the
backlash from home and abroad. Oxfam International is moving its headquarters
to Nairobi. ActionAid moved to Johannesburg and Amnesty International is
decentralising as well, however none have gone so far as to ask the question
‘Do we have the right to exist’. Since the recent ratification of the Nepal Constitution
and even before that there is a rising tide of resentment against the big NGOs,
it is felt these organisations are the source of much of the ‘corruption
money’, they are seen as the milk cow and consequently can be abused with
little fear of repercussions. In the light of the previously mentioned issues
of lack of positive Government action are the INGOs being used to actually
cover some of the duties that are actually government responsibilities while
the Government in fact use their funds for inappropriate activities?
Will the Nepali
government ever take full responsibility when so much foreign aid and action is
delivered into the country by these very INGOs?
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| Sarita standing with Nepal's Vive President to her left |
The Trekking Agents Association of Nepal (TAAN) The
Trekking Agencies' Association
of Nepal (TAAN) is an umbrella association for the trekking agencies.
It was established in 1979 by a handful of
trekking agent operators who felt it was time to devise sound business
principles within the trekking industry as well as to regulate the sector which
was growing by leaps and bounds with every passing year. It was also felt that
there was a need to develop a strong advisory group that could assist the
government in promotion Nepali tourism and to develop tourism as a sustainable
revenue generating industry. The association frequently communicates with
different government agencies and other stakeholders to simplify working
procedures and resolve problems related to the trekking sector. The executive
committee, which is elected every two years, has eight office-bearers, nine
executive committee members, four nominated executive members, one immediate
past president and one representative from TAAN Regional Association Pokhara.
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| The President of TAAN with Sarita and Binita |
The
association organizes different training sessions and workshops on a regular
basis to enhance the professionalism of its member agencies and their
workforce. It organizes a number of events; TAAN Lhosar Festival (February 17),
International Sagarmatha Day and TAAN Day (May 29), World Environment Day (June
5), and World Tourism Day (September 27), among others events. Other programs
include developing tree plantation, trekking trails and river clean-up campaigns,
it also works to promote agro-tourism and good community sanitation schemes.
At the last AGM held in 2015 Sarita was nominated for a position on the
Board which she secured with a large majorly. Her areas of responsibility now
include being the coordinator for internal relationships.
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| Temporry class-room at Megre School |
Mergre School Support Many of you have supported our small program to
help the Megre community, Ramachhap District post earthquake. With the funds
raised the community decided that it would be more appropriate for us to
provide financial support for a project that would benefit all, not just a few
families, so with this in mind we set out a few weeks ago to visit the
community to assess the school and to understand the work involved in trying to
support the community post earthquake. The agreement was that the community
would liaise with the local education office to clear all the administration
involved in the rebuild and then they would clear the site ready for the new
building. The school was certainly in a dangerous condition however the
community had constructed two new bamboo blocks of twin class-rooms as a
temporary measure. It is hoped the work will be finished before this year’s
monsoon.
It is anticipated that the construction will
provide six new class-rooms as well as a new toilet facility.
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| The Mergre School Committee meeting |
The school is a
government school but built on public land and provides education to a total of
360 pupils, 190 girls and 170 boys. This is an average breakdown in line with
Nepali culture as the boys, perceived as being more ‘valuable’ to a family, get
sent to what the parents believe are better schools in Kathmandu. There are at
the moment 23 students working towards their School Leaving Certificate (SLC)
this is I guess equivalent to our GCSE level, a compulsory pass is required if
the student wants to go onto higher education.
At the time of writing this newsletter the community have completed all
the paper work, they have cleared the site and the foundation work for the new
rooms has begun. Funding is provided retrospectively, or as appropriate and once
a certain stage of the reconstruction has been reached, providing it meets the
agreed standard then the bills are cleared ready for the next stage. So far so
good! But….!
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| Sher Bahadur the newly appointed leader on Nepal's Congress Party |
On March 7th
the Nepali Congress Party held their Presidential elections the outcome of
which saw Sher Bahadur Deuba voted into the Presidential position. Deuba has
also acted as Nepal’s Prime Minister on three separate previous occasions.
Whether the Terai people feel that Deuba is seen more of a ‘friend’, than KP
Sharma Oli the existing Prime Minister is, is debatable or whether the Madeshi
see this as another opportunity to see their Constitutional issues addressed
(See our previous Newsletter) by toppling PM Oli. However, whatever the reason
the petrol filling stations have again closed their gates and petrol has been
rationed since around the 27th March. As yet there is no border
dispute and I guess the garages are playing save just in case the supply dries
up or maybe anticipating another ‘black market’ situation. Never-the-less
vehicle owners are beginning to keep an eye of their fuel consumption just in
case .. I know I am and the line of taxis at the pumps are growing by the day.
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| Lessons in the tempory class-room at Megre School - life goes on |
So after all is said and done life goes on, the Nepalese people take
it all in their stride and go about their daily business as normal, what else
can they do? Rebuilding work continues and communities are getting back on
their feet. And for the tourists and other visitors, nothing seems to be amiss.
Nepal is as it always was – a happy go-luck place to be!
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