HELLO NEPAL

The Kathmandu Post 25 June 2017 FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS About one and half years ago, the government formed a high level commission to draft the Health Profession Education Policy (HPEP). Despite its recommendations to fix the fee for students who wanted to pursue the faculty of medicine, the government was dilly-dallying to do so. As a result, the medical colleges were charging exorbitant sums for MBBS and post graduate courses. Tribhuvan University has finally fixed fees amounting to Rs, 3.1 million for MD/MS programmes and has instructed the Institution of Medicine (IOM) to charge the fees accordingly (“Rs. 3.1m fee set for MD/MS courses” June 22, Page 3). However, the challenge for both TU and IoM is whether the medical colleges will abide by this rule. Any colleges found to be still charging exorbitant fees should be lawfully punished. Likewise, the fees for the MBBS course also need to be fixed immediately so that studying medicine will be affordable for aspiring

The Himalayan Times 22 June 2017 It’s time to shut down It was encouraging news that the government is finally on the course of shutting down the National Trading Ltd (NTL) after realizing that the NTL is eating up people’s tax paid money in the name of meeting its operational costs which was supposed to be covered from its profit margin “Govt on course to shut National Trading Ltd (THT, July 20, Page 1) rather than government pouring in it billions of rupees to keep it afloat. It was running on a huge loss for many years due to bad management and institutionalised corruption. There was no proper supervision and monitoring system from the government to ensure that the NTL was properly managed and run in a business-like manner. It was not surprising to know that the NTL has outstanding loans amounting to 1.4 billion rupees that it owes to the government and financial institutions. Why did the government have to wait for so many years to make decision of its closure? Likew

The Kathmandu Post 18 June 2017  Bravo Janardan It was encouraging to read that the Minister for Home Affairs Janardan Sharma is going to end political interference in security forces (“Will end political interference in security bodies: Sharma” June 16, Page 2). He has earned a lot of credibility for ending load shedding in the Kathmandu Valley while he was the Minister for Energy and Water Resources. Now, he has another opportunity to fulfil his promise by discouraging and ending political interference in the security agencies within the next seven months. In the past, minister for home affairs misused their authorities and demoralized security forces. It was sad to see the high ranking police personnel filing petitions in the Supreme Court against the high handedness of the political leaders. Sharma says that promotions will be based on performance; officials will not be promoted on the basis of pressure from politicians. He has also instructed police officials not to