Secretariat to recruit staff for PLA supervision

REPUBLICA
KATHMANDU, March 24: Giving a new momentum to the peace process, the Special Committee on Wednesday authorized its secretariat to recruit over 400 personnel for supervision, command and control of the Maoist combatants living in 28 cantonments.

The secretariat long wanted human resources and had sent a proposal to this effect to the Special Committee for endorsement. But the endorsement was delayed as Maoists did not want deployment of personnel at their cantonments.

The Special Committee has not been able to effectively enforce its command and control over 19,000 Maoist combatants due to lack of human resources.


“The Special Committee has endorsed a proposal of the secretariat submitted to the Nepal Peace Trust Fund, allowing recruitment of 433 personnel, 40 drivers and personal assistants,” Madhav Prasad Ghimire, chief secretary and spokesperson for the Special Committee, told reporters after a meeting of the committee on Wednesday.

Among these, 12 will work at the secretariat, 105 at the 21 satellite Maoist camps, 16 at the situation center, which will work as a central round-the-clock reporting mechanism, according to Dr Dipak Prakash Bhatt, a member of the secretariat. Besides, the secretariat will recruit ex-security personnel who will be deployed at cantonments for monitoring and supervision of ex-Maoist fighters whose management is at the center of the ongoing peace process.

With the decision, the Special Committee can now focus on the core work of integration and rehabilitation. As a modality of integration and rehabilitation is yet to come into existence, the Special Committee on Wednesday formed a four-member taskforce to develop such a modality and finalize standard norms for combatants aspiring integration into security agencies.

Dr Ram Sharan Mahat of Nepali Congress, Ishwor Pokharel of CPN-UML, Janardan Sharma of UCPN (M) and JP Gupta of Madhesi People´s Rights Forum are member to the taskforce.

“Works of the taskforce would depend on discussions at the political level and on how positively things will move ahead,” Maoist member on the Special Committee Sharma told Republica when asked how long the taskforce would take to complete the mandate.

Sharma further said that the works of the taskforce and discussions at political levels will go simultaneously in the coming days.

But Peace and Reconstruction Minister Barshaman Pun, while emerging from the meeting of the Special Committee, said the taskforce would not take more than two/three days to complete its works. However, Dr Ram Sharan Mahat, Nepali Congress representative on the Special Committee, said all would depend on the Maoists.