• Nepal Tourism Board in soup for releasing fund to TAAN despite IRLC asking it not to do so before auditing had been completed

Kathmandu, April 6 The International Relations and Labour Committee (IRLC) of the Legislature Parliament has sought clarification from Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) regarding the release of funds to Trekking Agencies’ Association of Nepal (TAAN) and not abiding by the instruction of the parliamentary panel. The IRLC had instructed NTB about a year back to release funds to associations/organisations only after the Office of the Auditor General had completed the auditing. In a meeting of the parliamentary panel, today, lawmakers have questioned NTB regarding the release of funds to TAAN breaching the instructions of the parliamentary committee. The committee has asked NTB to furnish the details with clear reasons to the IRLC within a week from today. TAAN issues TIMS card, which is mandatory for foreigners to trek in the country, to the trekkers. NTB then provides TAAN one-third of the amount received in the TIMS fund. NTB and TAAN jointly mobilise one-third of the money collected from the Trekkers’ Information Management System (TIMS) card issued to trekkers. TAAN and NTB signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for implementation of TIMS through the joint fund. TAAN was repeatedly requesting the tourism minister and secretary to direct NTB to release the fund of the joint account to compensate the families of trekking workers who died in the Annapurna region due to the blizzards in October last year. TAAN had recently released compensation to the families of victims on March 19 after NTB released the fund from joint account. As per the parliamentary panel, NTB breached the instruction by releasing fund to TAAN, without fulfilling the criteria set by the house panel. Similarly, the parliamentary panel also asked NTB to mobilise its budget to achieve the goal set by National Tourism Policy. As per lawmakers, NTB has been mobilising budget in a rampant manner. “There is no proper harmonisation between NTB’s programmes and the targets set by the policy,” said Committee Chair Prabhu Shah. NTB has also been asked to justify its programmes of this fiscal within 15 days. NTB plans to mobilise Rs 850 million in this fiscal. Similarly, the IRLC has also directed NTB to formulate programmes that harmonise with National Tourism Policy and also to host the programmes in all the concerned geographical regions in a participatory manner. NTB has also been asked to spend the service charge collected from tourists to provide optimum facility to the tourists visiting Nepal. Secretary of the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation Prem Kumar Rai and CEO of NTB Deepak Raj Joshi were also present at the meeting.