Kathmandu, September 2, 2005

Central leader of the Nepali Congress (NC), Shailja Acharya, today resigned from the party’s Central Working Committee (CWC) citing “ideological” and “policy-related” inconsistencies. The resignation comes soon after she was elected a CWC member. She secured the fifteenth place by garnering 645 votes. Someone who has long been finding faults in the NC leadership, Acharya today revealed that she was against contesting the CWC polls. “The NC has long been subjected to politics of manipulation and orchestration. One could tell the party was being run in a planned manner,” Acharya said in a statement. While she did not elaborate on the nature of the problems, the resentment demostrated by her is being attributed to the votes she garnered in comparison to Sujata Koirala who got 744 votes. She has been dropping consistent indications that Koirala should not have fielded Sujata or any other member of the Koirala clan as she claims she is the rightful heir to the Koirala legacy. Desisting from embarking on further criticism of the party, which is headed by her maternal uncle, Acharya once again raised the issue of the ideological dimension by claiming that the party can be revived on the strength of the votes cast to uphold its centrist credential. Acharya said as there is no point in being a member of the CWC, she was resigning.

S Korea to provide 2,000 seats for Nepali workers

Minister for Labour and Transport Management Ram Narayan Singh said today that his South Korean counterpart has assured him of providing work permit to some 2,000 skilled Nepali labourers in his country after January next year. He said both the governments would work out necessary formalities to this effect. It may be noted that the Korean government last year cancelled the quota for trainee labourers citing irregularities of Nepal’s manpower agencies in connivance with Korean agents. The minister, who met his Korean counterpart in August in connection with seeking opportunity for Nepali labourers in Korea, said that the quota to be received from Korea would be distributed to competent manpower agencies to select labourers. “The ministry will distribute these quota to the competent manpower agencies to select the labourers under the guidelines given by the ministry,” Singh said at an interaction programme organised by the Media Group Nepal. He said that the ministry had already called applications from eligible manpower agencies to be qualified for the selection of the workers for Korea. Singh said the ministry would set up at least 10 training centres across the country to provide basic training to Nepali youth seeking job in Korea.