Hare, esto pani hundo rahechha! Ke bhayeko yo??

From today's Kathmandu Post letter to editor:

Immoral practice

I was at the Health Ministry the other day to get an urgent piece of work done. I was told that I would have to wait till next month since the entire top hierarchy of the Ministry had gone on a US tour. I wondered what could have befallen on us that such a top-heavy group would be taken away from their important work in the country and made to fly across the seven seas. At the Ministry, no one was able to tell me the purpose of the trip except making sarcastic remarks, saying what else could be other than usual sightseeing and pocketing the daily allowance from the donor. Interestingly, upon further inquiry, I also learned that some of the top officials had gone with their wives too.
I should also mention here that a couple of months back, I was astonished to see first hand that a donor-funded project associated with the Health Ministry, was handing out a pocket money individually to all participants in the form of a daily allowance to a group of Health Ministry officials and Bir Hospital staff after treating them to a sumptuous food at the Radisson Hotel in the capital. I learned that the occasion was marked as a seminar to clean up the Bir Hospital. I doubt the Bir Hospital was cleaned up as a result of this seminar. When I asked a few recipients of the daily allowance, they said it is a regular practice of that project to keep the participants happy.

While the country is burning, I think the donors should be careful in sponsoring such useless activities. Isn?t there a thing called accountability that applies to all but, most importantly, to those who handle the public money that meant for the health of poor women and children? I think it is the donor community that needs to practice first what it preaches. I urge the donor involved in this case to accept its responsibility wisely before whining too much.

Nirman Newa

Lalitpur