Kathmandu, October 18, 2005

Nepali Congress (NC) President, Girija Prasad Koirala, today expanded the Central Working Committee (CWC) of the party by naming 18 members. The members are: Kul Bahadur Gurung, Govind Raj Joshi, Dil Bahadur Gharti, Ram Krishna Tamrakar, Laxman Ghimire, Gopal Raj Pahadi, Binay Dhoj Chand, Narahari Acharya, Sunial Kumar Bhandari, Farmulla Mansoor, Purna Kumar Sherma Limbu, Shyam Lal Shrestha, Padma Narayan Chaudhary, Dilendra Badu, Dr Shekhar Koirala, Arjun Joshi, Din Bandhu Shrestha and Suprabha Ghimire. In yet another significant move, Koirala appointed Sushil Koirala as the vice-president, while Kul Bahadur Gurung has been named general-secretary along with Ram Chandra Paudel. Dr Ram Sharan Mahat and Dr Ram Baran Yadav have been named joint general secretaries. Krishna Prasad Sitaula is the new spokesman of the party. Mahanta Thakur has been appointed treasurer. Bal Dev Sharma Majgaiya has been named chief of the Organisation Department, while Badu will head Coordination Department. Bhandari will now head Parliamentary and Local Body Department, while Sujata Koirala will head the Foreign Department. While Sitauala has been named head of the Publicity Department, Arjun Narsingh KC has been appointed head of the Policy and Programme Department. Suprabha Ghimire, Man Bahadur BK, Chakra Bastola and Min Bahadur Tamang have been named head of the Training, Research and Evaluationand Intellectual Department of the party, respectively.

Corruption up in ’05, says TI report

Kathmandu, October 18, 2005

Nepal has stood in the 117th position among 159 countries surveyed in the Transparency International’s (TI) Corruption Perception Index 2005 with a score of 2.5 out of a clean score of 10, said the latest TI report. A score close to 10 indicates that a country is perceived to be ‘highly clean’ and the higher a country is placed on the index, the less corrupt it is believed to be. The TI has reported an increase in perceived corruption in Nepal from 2004 to 2005. Nepal was in the 90th position among 146 countries surveyed last year. “An increase in perceived corruption from 2004 to 2005 can be measured in countries such as Costa Rica, Gabon, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Russia, Seychelles, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Trinidad & Tobago and Uruguay,” said the TI report. A number of countries and territories show noteworthy improvements — a decline in corruption — over the past year, including Estonia, France, Hong Kong, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Qatar, Taiwan and Turkey. The report stated that Bangladesh and Chad are the lowest in the list with a CPI score of 1.7; Pakistan and Sri Lanka stand in the 144th and 82nd position with the CPI scores of 2.1 and 3.2 respectively.