Even the Supreme Court’s verdict of December last year has not resolved the issue of billions of rupees deducted in the name of army welfare from the salaries and perks of the Nepal Army (NA) personnel sent on UN peacekeeping missions abroad since 1973. So far, over a span of three and a half decades, 61,000 NA soldiers have been to a number of countries on UN missions. The ex-soldiers have decided now to demonstrate and stage a hunger strike in front of the UN complex in the capital to push their demand for the return of some ‘Rs.65 billion illegally grabbed’ by the army headquarters. According to Ambar Bahadur Thapa, chairman of the Nepal Ex-Army Council, a soldier got only US$110 out of the monthly salary of US$500 provided by the UN from 1973 to 1977; from then until 1980, he received only $150 out of the $680 he was entitled to; and from 1980 to 2000, it was $300 out of the $950 he earned; and from 2001 on, it is $800 out of $1,028. In other words, during the first and second periods mentioned, the Nepali soldiers received only 22 per cent of what they earned. In the third and fourth periods, they received nearly 32 and 78 percent respectively.

If all this is not too much, what is? As if this were not enough, says the council, the Nepali peacekeepers did not even receive a cent out of the $2,000 given them along with the medals, $1,000 for clothing, $1,000 for training, $1,000 for family support, and $950 as support for one extra month. Going by the council’s calculations, the army headquarters takes about Rs.500,000 away from each soldier who has served on any UN peace mission for six months. The NA on Wednesday said that it would not return the money, as the money has been ‘deposited into the Army Social Welfare Fund’. It claimed that the interest earned on the money is used for various welfare activities, such as education and health, and that the uses of the money are ‘transparent’ and its operation has the government’s consent.

The transparency of the money and how it

has been used is secondary in importance. The

fundamental question is whether the army headquarters can legally do what it has done to the soldiers. Certainly, the Constitution, the other laws and the prevailing practices do not permit it. Policemen have also been on UN peace missions abroad and they have no such problems. The headquarters could not do justice to its own soldiers, nor could the government (the Prime Minister is now patron of the army welfare fund). The apex court issued a mandamus to the army headquarters requiring it to make the funds public and get the accounts audited, if not already audited. The aggrieved party now has the option of going to the court again with a new petition, and the case is likely to drag on for years. It would, therefore, likely be a case of justice delayed, justice denied. Under the circumstances, the only hope for early redress is the UN. After the issue has come to this pass after so many years, the UN should wield its clout and say whether the Nepali peacekeepers have been robbed of their right to the salaries and perks it disbursed in their names.