NDAC meeting also decides to produce explosives locally

KATHMANDU, June 6: The government has decided to take Internet service to all local units within two years. 

Monday’s meeting of National Development Action Committee (NDAC) headed by Prime Minister KP Oli decided to this effect, particularly to address connectivity for providing banking services to those units.

As many as 150 local units are yet to be connected to the banking service, and the people in these areas have to travel a long distance to operate their bank accounts.Officials of Nepal Telecommunication Authority (NTA) have said that the connectivity to all local levels is possible within a year if everything goes as planned. NTA Spokesperson Min Prasad Aryal said that they have already signed contracts with Internet service providers (ISPs) through competitive bidding for providing Internet in those districts.

The committee is a top-level body to sort out policy matters related to development projects and programs, and provide direction to these projects.

The committee meeting also decided to prepare software to collect reports of local levels and provinces. Such reporting system will be based on result-oriented indicators, according to Tirtha Dhakal, joint secretary of the National Planning Commission. With this software, all the local levels and provinces will be asked to routinely report to the central government on their progress.

Likewise, the committee, which includes ministers and NPC members, decided to take diplomatic initiative for bringing in raw materials for explosives from India and producing it commercially in the country, which will be mostly used for infrastructure projects such as digging tunnels and constructing roads. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in coordination with the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Supplies will discuss with India for importing raw materials. Currently. the government is importing ready-made explosives from India. But now onward, Nepal Army will produce it in its factory. The army has capacity to produce to meet the country’s need, according to NPC officials.The committee also decided to form a study committee led by NPC member Dil Bahadur Gurung on recommending appropriate benefit-sharing modality to address the demands put forward by the local community of Melamchi Water Supply project in Sindhupalchowk. Likewise, the committee also decided that all three tiers of the government should make their programs targeting identified poor people in 26 districts and also complete tasks of identifying poor in the remaining 51 districts.

With the end of financial support by the World Bank for Poverty Alleviation Fund, all its investments worth Rs 19 billion to 32,000 groups are out of government monitoring. To address this issue, the committee has decided to integrate these programs into government’s other programs.

 
• local
 
• units
 
• connected
 
• internet
 
• years