Kathmandu, August 21, 2007

The meeting of the cabinet council which was held today for the second day running has referred the names of 81 senior bureacrats to the Administrative Committee to pick up the final 26 names before they are appointed as secretaries.

The meeting was held at Baluwatar this afternoon with the issue of picking up secretaries topping the agenda. Ministries were without full-time secretaries pending enforcement of the Civil Service Act, 2007.

Those figuring in the list of 81 include all those 26 who are either acting or officiating secretaries apart from the other 55 who are joint secretaries and waiting for promotion to the post of secretaries. “The main agenda today was picking up secretaries.

The meeting ended today after referring the issue to the Administrative Committee. That will prune down the list to 26 and submit at the meeting tomorrow,” said Minister of Health and Population Giri Raj Mani Pokharel while talking with The Himalayan Times. Pokharel also said that “this time there are chances of health ministry bureaucrats coming around to be a secretary, something which was not the case so far. The law has been moved and possibility is growing.”

The Administrative Committee comprises of Home Minister Krishna Prasad Sitaula, Local Development Minister Dev Gurung, Minister of Industry, Commerce and Supplies Rajendra Mahato, General Administration Minister Ram Chandra Yadav, Minister of Labor and Transport Management Ramesh Lekhak and representative of Public Service Commission.

You’ve got to live with loadshedding

Kathmandu, August 21, 2007

The weekly load-shedding at the rate of current four hours is set to continue till power generation tops anywhere above 640 megawatt at peak hours.

This belies the conception of the laymen who could be under the impression that a good monsoon should rule out any further load-shedding in the season and thus twilight evenings also. However, that would still have been the scenario had the 20 odd hydro power projects spread far and wide in the country been reservoir-fed than run of the river entities which do not store water to feed power generation during all seasons. The fact that it is only Kulekhani which is reservoir-fed makes the scenario all the more dismal.

“Moreover, it is a project which meets merely 12 per cent of the total demand. Meanwhile if this can be any good news, the dam has now filled up to 1516 meter above the ground, with still 15 more meters to be filled up,” said Sher Singh Bhat, Chief of Load Despatch Centre at the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA). “Hence, the load-shedding will continue well into the future. What I want to make clear is it is linked with generation than water supply in the rivers or level of water in Kulekhani,” said Bhat.