Home Minister vows coordination in improving Kathmandu’s roads

KATHMANDU, August 14: Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa has said the gold smugglers’ racket has been busted.

Speaking in the meeting of the Sistainable Development and Good Governance Committee of the National Assembly, the upper house of the federal parliament, today, he said the network of the people involved in gold smuggling has been dismantled and the lynchpin of this racket has been booked.

He informed the committee that investigation showed a single racket smuggled 4,000 quintals gold from Dubai alone in a period of three years, and only 10 per cent of this smuggled gold was consumed in the country and the rest was smuggled out to India.

The Home Minister told the committee that an Indian national going by the name Jain smuggled gold to Indian market via Nepal using the air route from Dubai, Thailand and Malaysia. He added that since the people involved in smuggling gold using this route have all been arrested, gold smuggling has greatly diminished of late.

‘We are trying to control the smuggling of gold worth billions,’ the Minister for Home Affairs asserted.

Stating that development and construction activities would not be possible unless corruption is blunted and fully controlled, he expressed the determination that the government would leave no stone unturned to put an end to the tendency of holding back files (related to development projects) until getting bribe.

Stating that the home administration was working to create an atmosphere conducive for good governance, peace and development, the Home Minister promised to come up with a campaign against alcohol consumption, one of the reasons behind increasing cases of crime including murder and rape. Progress on the development projects was like at the zero-level since years due to the negligence of contractors and efforts were on to move ahead in coordination with ministries concerned to improve the conditions of Kathmandu Valley roads.

Cases of land fraud and human trafficking are connected with the billions of rupees and trafficking in women is being practiced as a modern of slavery and maxim measures are in place to curb such incidents.

According to the Home Minister, some forces are causing obstructions in the way towards development and good governance in the name of caste, religion and community.

The government is committed to overcome all these challenges. Perpetrators in explosion, forced donation and giving statement against the system would be brought to justice as all those activities have been prohibited by the laws. RSS