Mahendranagar, August 18, 2006 The Maoists, who had been collecting customs duties on the southern border point of Kanchanpur, have also begun collecting duties at the Dodhara suspension bridge. Four Maoists have been stationed for the past two days for collecting the taxes, businessmen said. The Maoists have also been collecting customs duties from Sripur and Basaha customs points of Kanchanpur. The Maoists are issuing permits even for the smuggling of contraband goods, the businessmen alleged. However, Kanchanpur district in-charge of the CPN (Maoist) Shrawan said they would never allow the smuggling of contraband goods into Nepal. Government officials said the Maoists were extorting money and violating the ceasefire code of conduct. “Nothing will be achieved by holding talks at the district level,” CDO of Kanchanpur Govinda Khanal said, adding, “We have informed the authority about the Maoist move.” While Khanal said the goods found to have been brought in the district without paying customs duties would be seized, the Maoists said paying the duties to them would be enough. Scribes got cash on minister’s orders, PAC told  The Director General of the Department of Information (DoI) during the royal regime, Madan Gopal Malego, today said the department had distributed money to journalists under the direct supervision of the former minister for Information and Communication. According to him, all they did was follow the government’s instructions. “Though the government had formed a central coordination committee under me, the minister directed us to distribute the money or perform other tasks,” Malego told the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC). The PAC quizzed Malego and a few journalists who had received the amount from the royal regime. Deputy Director of the DoI, Uddav Bahadur Thapa, also said that they did nothing apart from what was directed by the minister. The journalists interrogated were Jasuda Pradhan, Tara Nath Subedi, Bishow Bimohan Shrestha and Krishna Raj Pandey. “I accepted the amount to run the National Federation of Journalists and the People’s Review weekly,” Pradhan said. “I did not ask for the money, but it was my right to demand advertisements,” she said. Chairman of the committee Chitra Bahadur KC, MPs Shiv Basnet, Tek Bahadur Chokhyal and Dilli Raj Sharma, said they will take a decision in the next meeting on Monday on what action should be taken against the journalists.