Apropos of the news story “Nepali passengers being levied excess tax illegally” (THT, December 23, Page 1), this is indeed a ‘daylight robbery’ as pronounced by joint secretary Suresh Acharya, also a CAAN director, who can easily monitor whether such malpractice has taken place.

Since CAAN is the one which authorized airlines to include TSF in the air tickets, it should rescind the authority of the airlines to do so for Nepali passengers or ask them to give MCO for refund along with the tickets.

The episode is just like the left hand blaming the right hand or the left leg and the right leg of a person going in opposite directions.

After all, the MoCTCA, CAAN and NTB are all part of the government and they should not display their incompetence for public consumption by excoriating one another.

Reading the news story it seems that the concerned authorities were well aware of the fact that the excess tax had been levied from the Nepali air passengers travelling outside the country.

If the joint secretary himself admits that it is a daylight robbery, then, he should act promptly to refund the amount so collected to the rightful persons and he should make necessary arrangement to refund the levy.

He should issue a public notice through mass media stating that the excess tax collected illegally will be refunded to the passengers. All state agencies should be mindful that no illegal tax is collected and if such malpractice has occurred an immediate redressal action must be taken.

The concerned ministry and CAAN should issue a public apology for collecting the illegal tax.

Manohar Shrestha, Kathmandu

Parrot species

Parrots represent one of the big family of birds among avian members and are widely distributed across the tropical and sub-tropical regions and are also found in some of the temperate and sub-temperate regions as well.

The highest diversity of parrots is observed across the Asia-Australia as well as the Central and South American bio-geographical regions. True parrot species are found across Africa, Australia, Central and South America.

Parakeets are small or medium sized members of the parrot family too, but are not true parrots. It is quite unfortunate that most South Asian newspapers and magazine represent the South Asian parakeets as parrots in a majority of their reports. This is not correct.

No true parrot species are found in the Indian subcontinent region. What we do see are a wide diversity of different parakeet species like the Alexandrine parakeet, the rose ringed parakeet or the blossom headed parakeet to name only a handful of over dozen species.

These are gregarious bird species that move in huge flocks, nest in natural hollows of big trees and in the cracks and fissures of old abandoned buildings.

Species are mostly sexually dimorphic, meaning males and females can be distinguished based on the distinct colors, patterns, markings.

Saikat Kumar Basu, Canada