Cooperative loan recovery tribunal formed

By A Staff Reporter,Kathmandu, July.1: The government has appointed former secretary Raghu Ram Bista as the coordinator of the Public Procurement Review Committee. 

A meeting of the Council of Ministers held on Friday (June 27) decided to form the committee under Bista's coordination.

The meeting also appointed Rohit Kumar Bisural and Thaneshwar Gautam from the engineering service as members of the committee, 

according to Minister for Communication and Information Technology Prithvi Subba Gurung. Minister Gurung formally made public the Cabinet meeting’s decision by organising a press conference on Monday at his ministry. Bista, who has been made the coordinator, retired mandatorily in mid-June this year from the position of Auditor General due to reaching the age limit of 58.

Meanwhile, the Cabinet meeting appointed former secretary Ram Sharan Pudasaini as the Executive Director of the Administrative Training Institute, Staff College, Jwalakhel, Lalitpur.

According to Minister Gurung, the government appointed former Revenue Secretary Pudasaini as the ED of the Staff College.

After retiring from the secretary post, he had also served as the chairman of the Agricultural Development Bank.

Likewise, the government has formed a Loan Recovery Tribunal under the chairmanship of Kriti Bahadur Basnet, former under-secretary of the Supreme Court. 

According to a minister, the Cabinet meeting approved the formation of the tribunal based on a proposal by the Ministry of Land Management, Cooperatives, and Poverty Alleviation, with Basnet as its head.

The members of the tribunal include Basant Parajuli from Dhankuta and Govinda Sharma Gaire from Tanahun. This Loan Recovery Tribunal will mainly take concern of the loan disbursed and couldn’t be collected from different cooperative offices across the country, said Minister Gurung at the press conference. 

Previously, there was a loan recovery tribunal to deal with disputes related to loans from banks and financial institutions, but no such body existed to resolve disputes related to cooperative loans.

Although provisions for this were included in the Cooperatives Act-2017, they had not been implemented. Reports including that of the parliamentary probe committee on cooperatives led by CPN-UML lawmaker Surya Thapa Chhetri, along with other studies, had recommended the establishment of such a tribunal.

The government has promoted Brigadier General of the Nepali Army Rabindra Khatri to the rank of the Major General. 

According to the Minister, as per the proposal of the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, the government has decided to mark National Cinema Day on Asoj 15 every year and endorsed National Tourism Policy-2025 upon the proposal of the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation.

Further, the Cabinet meeting endorsed the visit of several secretaries of the Ministry of Drinking Water, Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport and Ministry of Communication and Information Technology. 

The Cabinet meeting sanctioned the visit of Tourism Minister Badri Pandey to France and Minister for Agriculture and Livestock Development Ram Nath Adhikari to 

Vietnam and decided to provide financial assistance of Rs. 500,000 as compensation to the family of Akuv Ahmad, a resident of Duduwa Rural Municipality in Banke district. On March 23, two children of Akuv Ahmad died when a water tanker hit his children.