KATHMANDU: Many of the temporary employees appointed from 1996-1997 till date at the National Sports Council are likely to bear the brunt as the sports governing body is set to cut the size of its employees.

“The NSC board meeting today formed a probe committee to assess the neccessity of these employees,” said the NSC Member Secretary Hari Babu Chaudhary. “The committee, which started its job from today, will submit its report within the next three weeks. Depending on the findings of the report, we will move ahead whether to retain, make permanent or terminate their jobs,” said Chaudhary.

“The committee will work on to filter the temporary employees according to the nature of their jobs. All the temporary employees including those who are former or current players would be scrutinised in this regard,” added Chaudhary. Chaudhary reasoned that overstaffing in the NSC had forced them to consider the cut in the number of the employees. The government has allowed a total of 1,000 posts in the NSC but the number has gone up to more than 1,200 at present.

“Those additional employees are made to be paid through the internal resources of the NSC — the income which actually is meant to be spent for the institutional and logistic development of the players. Government either has to increase the number of posts or completely terminate them,” added Chaudhary.

The meeting also decided to terminate the contract of all the temporary employees appointed by former Member Secretary Jeevan Ram Shrestha during the fifth National Games. The staffs recruited solely for the purpose of smoothly organising the fifth National Games are still clinging to their posts despite their contract expired in August/September.

Meanwhile, the NSC also made a contradictory decision — to recruit more employees for the protection of infrastructure. NSC said the employees they were appointing would be of the low ranks including peon and guards and the number won’t exceed 20. Today’s meeting has also approved to increase the pension amount provided to the first Olympians. The meeting decided to raise the pension amount to Rs 2,000 from Rs 1,564.