Committee turns to ministry of law for new ESC chiefHimalayan News ServiceKathmandu, April 11A recommendation committee formed by the government to suggest names for a high level and independent Education Service Commission has turned to the ministry of law, justice and parliamentary affairs, after being unable to find a single person meeting the criteria for the chairmanship of the commission.Parliament, in its 20th session, had passed a bill regarding education service. After its seventh revision, the bill was passed with a recommendation to form a high level Education Commission. As per the Act, the names referred by the recommendation committee to the government, should be endorsed by a cabinet decision. The Education bill has a clause that the person appointed as chairman must have had prior experience of working as a government secretary or an equivalent post for at least five years. The criterion for the position of chairman also demands knowledge of legal and educational fields. The recommendation committee had asked for the personal files of all retired secretaries of the government from the ministry of general administration but could not find a single person meeting the criteria. “All the secretaries have retired before the completion of five years in their post. Those who could have stayed in the post for five years had taken voluntary leave earlier than the designated time, for personal reasons,” said a member of the recommendation committee talking to The Himalayan Times.The government has appointed the chairman of the Public Service Commission Yogendra Nath Ojha, vice-chancellor of Tribhuwan University Nabin Prakash Jung Shah and secretary at the ministry of education Laba Kumar Devkota as members of the recommendation committee. The committee’s failure to suggest names for the new commission has delayed the results of 84 thousand applicants waiting to become government schoolteachers for the last six years. The government has suspended the results since the bill has a provision that the commission would introduce a teacher’s licence system before hiring them.The recommendation committee member said that the cause of the delay was not the committee but the bill itself. “No one bothered to check if there were any government secretaries with experience of five continuous years in the post, the bill was randomly passed without proper homework”. If the ministry of law and justice cannot render an outlet, the act itself is going to be the main hurdle in forming the commission, he said, “Under such circumstances, the recommendation committee will become helpless and people with no experience will grab a position of responsibility, through political appointments”.