Kathmandu, June 6

The Parliament continued discussion on ministry-wise budgetary allocations today as well.

Lawmakers from various political parties expressed their views on budget allocated for nine ministries —  population and environment; livestock development; land reform and management, physical infrastructure and transport; women children and social welfare; Youth and sports; defence, forest and soil conservation; and commerce.

NC lawmaker Tarani Dutta Chataut said ministry-wise discussion on budget had became like a ritual, as the House had scheduled discussion on several ministries at once.

He drew government’s attention to the pathetic condition of national highways — East-West Highway, north-south highways and urged the government to allocate budget for repairing road sections of highways. Chataut also urged the government to find an alternative to Muglin-Narayangadh road.

UML lawmaker Purushottam Paudel drew the government’s attention to the squatters’ problems. He said the government had distributed over 400,000 land ownership certificates to landless squatters in last two decades, but the problems still remain to be resolved. He also criticised the government for reducing budget of Ministry of Youth and Sports.

CPN-Maoist Center Lawmaker Agni Prasad Sapkota said the government failed to bring the budget in a way that could help institutionalise new changes.

He said NGOs and INGOs were influencing the government in its internal decision-making process.

Nepal Workers and Peasants Party lawmaker Dilli Prasad Kafle demanded that expenditure of ministries of Population and Environment, Livestock Development, Land Reform and Management and Commerce be reduced. He also drew the government’s attention to the poor spending of the development budget, which he said had severely affected development work. He said that the government should manage a proper mechanism to implement development budget.

He also criticised the trend of spending capital expenditure towards the end of the fiscal randomly.