The profiling of combatants is significant in that it will not only lead the process to the ultimate discharge of the disqualified but will also provide information required for Peace Ministry and the UN agencies to prepare rehabilitation packages for 4,008 combatants disqualified by the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN).
On Tuesday, a meeting of the Discharge and Rehabilitation Committee headed by Peace Minister Rakam Chemjong was supposed to finalize the questionnaire to pave the way for the beginning of the second phase on November 22. But the meeting ended inconclusively after Maoist representative in the committee Dr Indrajit Rai declined to agree on a question.
The close-ended question is related to what the disqualified combatants would want to do within a year after their discharge, sources said. Dr Rai held on to his party´s insistence that the question be open-ended so that the disqualified would have chance to express their choice. But Minister Chemjong, UNMIN Chief Karen Landgren and representatives from the Office of the UN Resident Coordinator, UNICEF and UNFPA refused to concede, sources said.
“I was asked by Ananta [Barshaman Pun] and Baldev [Chandra Prakash Khanal] not to agree on the questionnaire until there is a provision for providing financial package to the combatants,” Dr Rai told myrepublica.com on Tuesday evening.
As per the question in controversy, the disqualified combatants are asked to pick one from among six choices. The choices include: a) vocational training, b) small scale business, c) agriculture and animal husbandry, d) formal education, e) skill development, and f) informal education. But the Maoists want to add one more choice -- “others”. Their point is that if “others” choice is given, the combatants would be free to express what they want to do.
“The choices proposed in the questionnaire do not ensure security to the combatants after their release from the cantonment,” Dr Rai said.
But the government and UNMIN representatives fear that if the question is left open-ended, all the combatants are likely to demand cash incentives -- one million rupees per combatants, which they have been demanding since long.
“We want cash incentive for them much in the way combatants in Nigeria and Sierra Leon were given,” Rai further said. He claimed that the World Bank, Japan and other donors had given the cash incentives for combatants in those countries.
However, sources said that the discharge process was begun on October 11 after the Maoist leadership agreed that no cash incentive would be given to the disqualified combatants under rehabilitation programs. Maoist leader Janardan Sharma, when he was the Peace Minister, had agreed not to offer any cash incentives to the disqualified combatants, sources claimed.
“There was no such agreement. The proposal on possible rehabilitation package for the disqualified combatants was under discussion. A meeting of the representatives from the government, combatants and political parties was to take a decision on the rehabilitation package. But such a meeting never convened when I was the minister, Sharma said.
“With the deadlock over finalizing the questionnaire, the second phase has been thrown into limbo,” said a government source, “We cannot deploy the enumerators on November 22 in cantonments.”
The calendar of the discharge has already been revised twice. Initially, the process began on July 17 but was stalled after the Maoist did not cooperate. It was resumed on October 11, with the plan to discharge the disqualified November 5 onward. When things did not happen as planned, the calendar was revised again, with aim to see the disqualified leaving the cantonments December 7 onward.
“With the delay in finalizing the questionnaire, we will have to change our calendar again,” said the source.
kiran@myrepublica.com
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