Government’s policies and programmes positive: Chair Dahal

Expressing his view at the Legislature-Parliament meeting, Chairman Dahal said that diversifying the trade was the important and genuine issue, saying developing self-reliant economy and improving service sector were also genuine.He said that it was necessary to form an effective mechanism regarding forwarding role of public, private and cooperative sectors, accelerating reconstruction task and constructing people’s houses.

Chair Dahal further stressed the need of bringing a concrete programme regarding land reform.

Stating that the policies and programmes of bringing farmers under the responsibility of social security have added new excitement on farmers, he said that plan of exploring petroleum, ending power outage within two years and generating 10,000 MW electricity within 10 years is timely and genuine.

Chairman Dahal expressed the belief that 10,000 MW power could be generated within 10 years, clarifying that consensus and collaboration among major political parties were must to make big and ambitious projects successful.

Forwarding big and important projects like Tarai-Madhes prosperous Irrigation Project, Rasuwagadhi-Lumbini railway and Kathmandu-Tarai-Madhes fast Track and establishimg agriculture campus are the important programmes of the incumbent government, he added.

Also the former Prime Minister, Dahal said that a national consensus government was necessary to resolve all the problems surfaced in the country and urged the incumbent government to carry out work without any doubt.

He also drew the attention not to make any negative argument over their initiative taken for the formation of a national consensus government and added stressed that major political parties should focus their attention in implementation of new constitution and reconstruction task.

Saying that the government’s policies and programmes lack a clear outline regarding the conclusion of peace process, he warned that conflict may take place in case the peace process that moved forward as per the comprehensive peace agreement and interim constitution were to be addressed in a traditional way.

Saying that there is not any exception to holding local elections as soon as possible, he said the elections should be held based on the report by the Local Body Reconstructing Commission and through political consensus and sorting out constitutional difficulties.

He also said that the policies and programmes fail to clarify ways to revolve Tarai-Madhes issues, stressing the need to resolve such issues.

Policies and programmes ‘parcel of lies’

Meanwhile, main opposition Nepali Congress criticised the policies and programmes as a ‘parcel of lies’.

Speaking at the meeting, NC lawmaker Arjun Narasingh KC accused the government of trying become popular among local people by accommodating in the policies the programme to construct ‘helipads’ in villages instead of providing April 25 earthquake victims with reliefs.

He also blamed the government for a failure to decrease trade losses, provide reliefs to quake victims, address concerns of the protesting Madhes-based political parties, Tharu and indigenous community.

While leaders of the ruling UML like lawmaker Astalaxmi Shakya have defended the policies and programmes as a progressive one.

Shakya said that the government put forward the policies and programmes for the proper implementation of the constitution.

She also added that some issues incorporated in the policies and programmes like announcement of local elections that could not take place for long, a scheme of one house one employment for the quake victims, the completion of quake-ravaged houses and structures within five years and of moving forward the prosperous Tarai-Madhes irrigation programmes.