Kathmandu, September 2:

The chief commissioner of the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA), Surya Nath Upadhayay, has said that the discretionary powers enjoyed by government officials should be curtailed to control corruption and other irregularities. Demanding that such powers be curtailed to check corruption, Upadhayay said: “Transparency in decision-making processes can also help check corruption and other irregularities.” Upadhayay was speaking at the inaugural session of a week-long workshop on Investigative Journalism and Corruption Control. “The press and the CIAA have been fighting for good governance,” he said, adding: “Since controlling corruption is our common goal, we should fight corruption together.”

The chief of the National Vigilance Centre, Bal Krishna Prasain, also said discretionary powers enjoyed by officials should be curtailed to check irregularities. “Though preventive measures are more effective in curbing crimes like corruption, we have so far been using curative measures to control corruption,” Prasain observed. The FNJ president, Bishnu Nisthuri, called on the Royal Palace and the Royal Nepali Army “to make their financial transactions transparent so as to win confidence of people.” Asking journalists to keep on exposing the cases of graft, the director of the ARD Rule of Law Project, Federic Yeager, and the USAID representative, Von Millard, urged the journalists to think of ways to expose, and thus, control corruption.