KATHMANDU: The task of searching former royal member’s property in foreign countries has been halted from the past the two years, all thanks to the government’s conspicuous apathy.

The government has entrusted the Office of the Nepal Trust to carry out search over the property of the former royalties.

However, the office has been collecting the property details of the former royal members inside the country only.

When asked, the NT officials said the government did not allocate any budget for the purpose of searching the property in the foreign lands.

“In the last fiscal, the then government did not bring any programme to search such properties in the alien land,” said Min Prasad Gyawali, spokesperson for the the office.

“In this fiscal too, although President Dr Ram Baran Yadav declared that programmes would be brought to search the former royals’ properties in the foreign land, the government did not allocate the budget for the same,” he noted. Due to the lack of budget and manpower crunch, the office has not been able to perform the assigned tasks. “Besides the budgetary restriction, lack of employees has also been adversely affecting our daily activities.”

Gyawali further added that he had written a letter to the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers, but to no avail.

The trust was set up in 2007 to look into the property details of the former royal members.