Prime Minister shows weakness over syndicate, power outage

The entrepreneurs today asked the care-taker Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal to order the home ministry to ban syndicate from today, ban multiple tax collected by the Village Development Committee (VDC) and District Development Committee (DDC), provide industries enough electricity for their smooth operation, let the crusher industry that has Rs 40 billion invested in them operate and end the dispute over the Certificate of Origin (CoO) as soon as possible.
"We want immediate ban of syndicate," said president of the Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI) Kush Kumar Joshi at a meeting with the Prime Minister at the National Planning Commission (NPC) here today afternoon.
"Not only the people but also the transport entrepreneurs are suffering from the syndicate, he said, adding that the local administration is hesistent in taken action against the syndicate has discouraged the geninun entrepreneurs in in Kailali, Dhangadi, Siraha and Solu.
However, the premier showed his weakness over not being able to take action against the syndicate, though, he promised to order home ministry to investigate.
"We have approached the local administration repeatedly after taking those involved in syndicate under control but the local administration has not been taking the matter seriously," complained Joshi.
Similarly, the prime minister could not give any assurance to provide the regular electricity supply to the industries, instead he urged -- as usual -- the entrepreneurs to come up with a detailed plan on how to solve the ever increasing load-shedding.
"The successive governments have been asking the private sector to come up with the detailed plan on how to end load-shedding, but they donot take our suggestions seriously pushing the country to more power crisis," said an irrate industrialist after the meeting with the Prime Minister at the NPC hall .
"Rather the prime minister promised to hold a work-shop that is childish," he said, adding that the government of Madhav Kumar Nepal two years ago formed a separate Energy Ministry to look after the energy crisis, "but the ministry could not be able to add single megawatt (MW) of electricity in last two years, neither is it ready to increase the rate of Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) nor has it been able to bring any programme to encourage the domestic power producers. "This shows the government is not serious on solving the chronic power outage problem, and taking it lightly," said another industrialist after the meeting. "Power is the engine that could propel the economic growth but government apathy has left the whole country under power crisis."
The Prime Minister also could not come clear on chrusher industry. He preached the industrialists on nature conservation. "But the illegal crusher industries are operating openly in the country and the government has banned the legal industries," according to the industrialists.However, Nepal promised to separate the locations where crusher industry can be operated and where they should not be allowed to operate.
On the proposal of the umbrella organisation of the private sector on Certificate of Origin (CoO), Nepal suggested the industrialists to work unitedly and not make it a prestige issue.
Confederation of Industries (CBI) and FNCCI has been fighting over the right to issue CoO. "But the transparent division of the fees could solve the problem," the Prime Minister suggested.