Agreement ends transport cartels

Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport and transport entrepreneurs agreed to end the cartel and operate under Company Act in the transport sector after marathon rounds of discussions.
In a meeting held at the Ministry in Kathamndu tonight, transport minister Raghubir Mahaseth, transport secretary and director general of the Department of Transport Management discussed with the agitating transport entrepreneurs to end the cartel. After the five-point agreement, the transport entrepreneurs have also expressed their commitment to support the government initiatives to end the transport cartel by officially withdrawing all kinds of protest programmes. The two sides have also reached an agreement to form a taskforce to make the transport sector more effective and transparent.
The two sides agreed to end all form of cartel in public transportation, to allow individuals with only one public transport to provide services, form a probe committee as per the mandamus issued by the Supreme Court, form a committee incorporating ministers and concerned agencies for consultation, and withdraw from all forms of protests.
Both the parties are going to organise a joint press conference tomorrow to announce the details of agreement reached between the government and transport entrepreneurs.
Late evening, the government has also released 106 transport entrepreneurs including Federation of Nepalese National Transport Entrepreneurs (FNNTE) president Yogendra Nath Karmacharya, senior vice president Bijay Bahadur Swar, general secretary Punya Prasad Sitaula (Saroj), deputy general secretary Basanta Bhandari, treasurer Kiran Kumar Khadka and in-charge of Province 3 Dharma Raj Rimal, who were arrested by the police for not operating their vehicles on Friday.
The transport entrepreneurs – on Friday – had halted public vehicles across the country to force the government to withdraw from its decisions of implementing the new regulation that has directed all the transporters to register their transport committees as a company.
Currently, most of the public vehicles operate under the committees and are blamed for evading tax.
However, the government struck as home minister Ram Bahadur Thapa directed to arrest transport entrepreneurs, cancel route permits and freez their bank accounts. The central bank – after the Home Ministry's request – froze 245 bank accounts of transport entrepreneurs and their committees in the afternoon.

Central bank freezes bank accounts of 245 transport committees

Two days after the government's decision to freeze bank accounts of the agitating transport entrepreneurs committees, the central bank froze their accounts today.
The central bank spokesperson Narayan Prasad Paudel confirmed that the Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) today has directed to all banks and financial institutions (BFIs) to freeze the bank accounts of 245 such committees of transport operators.
"We have already instructed to stop making payments from the bank accounts of these committees but today we have issued official circular," he said, adding that the banks will now freeze their accounts.
The central bank – after correspondence from the Finance Ministry – has directed BFIs to freeze the accounts of transport committees defying the government, though they have more than two months time – by the beginning of next fiscal yaer – to convert the transport committees into companies.
The transport committees, which were operating as cartels, had started agitation against a government move to implement the new Transport Regulation. The regulation has not recognised their transport committees which are blamed for practicing cartel and asked them to register under Company Act.
Though, the government can seize the money in the bank accounts of the organisations, whose registrations have been scrapped, according to the law, it is said to be against the individual right to property. 
The Home Ministry along with Transport Ministry – on Friday – had decided to freeze bank accounts of transport committees after they halted the service across the country.

Secretary directs department to take stern action against black marketeers

Though, secretary at the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers Krishna Hari Baskota today directed the officials of Department of Commerce and Supply Management to act tough against firms and individuals involved in market malpractices, the syndicate, cartel and black marketeering has been on rise in recent days making the common people pay the price.

He also urged the market monitors to take stern action against firms and individually involved in arbitrary price fixation, hoarding, using unhygienic colours and raw materials in food, and selling substandard products.

Asking the market inspectors to punish on the spot to make market monitoring more effective, Baskota also praised the department for its role in controlling market malpractices.

Despite the department has monitored the market for 1,298 times and district level for 320 times in the current fiscal year, the consumers have yet been forced to pay for substandard products and services.
Director general of the department Narayan Bidari, on the occasion, said that the department has planned to monitor the market for 20,510 times.