Kathmandu, January 14:

The five-hour meeting today between government officials and the trade unions of the Nepal Water Supply Corporation was put off till tomorrow as both the parties failed to reach any conclusion. The meeting will continue tomorrow.

“The meeting turned out to be meaningless as we did not give up our demands and the government was not ready to listen to us,” Raj Kumar Thapa, secretary of the Joint Struggle Committee of NWSC Employee Association, told this daily.

He said that the representatives from the struggle committee were firm on their demand to retreat the government’s decision of inviting a foreign management contractor.

He said the Bill to Amend the NWSC Act should be revised in terms of scraping provisions that enable the government to hand over NWSC to a private company.

A committee was formed in the ministry, headed by joint secretary Krishna Prasad Acharya, to solve the problem of the employees who have been demanding job security after the NWSC goes into a new management system.

Acharya said both parties have reached an agreement and only “final touches” are left to be made.