Earlier, the Special Committee for Supervision, Integration and Rehabilitation of Maoist combatants had made public its plan to deploy the surveyors to cantonments on June 28 for completing the ´fundamental tasks of the peace process´ by August 31 as agreed in the five-point deal reached among three major parties before the extension of the term of Constituent Assembly on May 28. [break]
The Special Committee has already invited applications from interested candidates for the jobs. The committee, however, has put on hold the recruitment of the surveyors as parties have not yet come to an agreement on key issues of the integration and rehabilitation.
“The recruitment of surveyors has been put on hold for now. We will be in position to recruit them when we become ready to send them to the field [after agreement on all contentious issues related to integration],” said Chief Secretary Madhav Prasad Ghimire, who is also the spokesperson of the Special Committee.
The surveyors were supposed to reach the cantonments and learn about whether the individual combatants opted integration or rehabilitation or voluntary retirement. The failure to send surveyors to the field has already affected an earlier calendar that said the Maoist combatants would be detached from their arms by August 27-- four days before the expiry of the extended term of the CA.
As in the previous four rounds, the scheduled meeting of the Special Committee held on Sunday ended without discussing contentious issues of integration and rehabilitation, according to Ghimire. “There was briefing of field situation of the cantonments at the meeting,” said Ghimire.
The meeting was attended by Prime Minister Jhalanath Khanal, Maoist leader Barsha Man Pun and NC leader Dr Ram Sharan Mahat. Other members of the Special Committee from the UCPN (Maoist), NC, UML and Madhesi parties were absent at the meeting.
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