“The fund is kept secret in the budget of Rs 9.68 billion allocated to the Ministry of Peace and Reconstruction. The government plans to distribute Rs 200,000 each to the families of Maoist martyrs,” said a highly placed source at the Ministry of Finance.[BREAK]
The government chose the secret path as the opposition parties, mainly Nepali Congress, had asked the government in clear terms not to allocate such funds until broader consensus is forged on the issue at the political level.
Interestingly, Finance Minister Bharat Mohan Adhikari had assured NC leaders in swearing that he has gone by thier advice and has not made such allocations while briefing the opposition parties on final budget at Prime Minister´s residence in Baluwatar.
“The minister lied because he simply could not bear the pressure that UCPN (Maoist), the largest party in the coalition, was exerting on him,” said a source.
Maoist had been pushing the government to provide Rs 1 million in compensation to each of its deceased cadres, mainly as the State promised a million rupees and paid Rs 750,000 to families of the police and army men who died battling the armed-conflict.
However, the opposition parties, mainly NC, has been opposing the idea. As a result, past governments -- even the one led by UCPN (Maoist) itself -- had refrained from making such allocations.
That is not all. Even while the parties in the opposition are yet to start ministry-wise discussions on allocations, MoPR has even initiated drafting directives, incorporating norms, guidelines and extent of compensation, for distributing the money.
“The plan is to get the modality endorsed by the cabinet at the earliest,” said the source.
However, formulation of the directives has been halted for now after Bishwonath Shah, peace and reconstruction minister, stopped attending to his office after submitting his resignation from the government to Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal.
“Hence, we are still not sure how the fund will be distributed. But what is sure is that it will be distributed among those families of deceased Maoist cadres who received Rs 100,000 from Emergency Peace Support Project (EPSP) in the past,” said Shankar Pathak, joint secretary at MoPR.
Under EPSP, run under the World Bank support, the government by 2009/10 had distributed Rs 100,000 to the families of 13,538 persons who died during the conflict period.
These included families of security personnel as well as those of commoners.
“But as the families of deceased security men received additional compensation of Rs 750,000 from the government, the plan was to exclude them from the package this time round,” the source said, revealing that the fund is meant for distribution among Maoist cadres only.
Claims still coming in
MoPR officials said they are still receiving fresh claims for compensations from the families of persons who passed away during the conflict period.
“In 2010/12, we had allocated fund to compensate 355 such families. The number is above 13,538 persons that we were able to identify till 2009/10,” said Pathak.
However, as the ministry is yet to receive final reports of disbursements from district administration offices, Pathak said he could not confirm how many of them actually received the money.
The government-formed task force entrusted to ascertain the number of people who died in conflict-related incidents has recently reported that the government can expect compensation claims from additional 1,000 families. Based on its report, the Ministry of Finance has allocated another Rs 100 million to MoPR for disbursement this year.
The task force has also estimated that total claims for such compensations, that is deaths due to conflicts, could jump to as high as 18,000.
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