CIAA drawn to appointment row

KATHMANDU, May 11:  Controversy over the procedure to appoint six labor attaches to different labor destinations took a new turn on Monday after Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) took the appointment files under its control for necessary investigation.



The anti-corruption watchdog took all documents related to the appointment process from Ministry of Labor and Transport Management on Monday, a source at MoLTM told Republica. “CIAA officials took away all documents related to the appointment process to probe the case, following complaints about the irregularities in the appointment process,” the source added.[break]



Minister for Labor and Transport Management Mohamad Aftab Alam had manhandled foreign secretary Madan Kumar Bhattarai a few days ago to exert pressure on the Foreign ministry to endorse the appointment of six labor attaches.



Protesting the manhandling of the foreign secretary, employees of Foreign ministry expressed their dissatisfaction with Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal and Foreign Minister Sujata Koirala on Monday. Responding to the employees, PM Nepal has called a meeting of Foreign minister, Labor minister and secretaries of the concerned ministries to resolve the issues.



Employees of both the Foreign and Labor ministries have been expressing their dissatisfaction over the entire appointment process.



MoLTM had last month appointed labor attaches to six labor destinations, ignoring even the reasonable minimum qualifications. The ministry had appointed under secretaries Kashi Raj Dahal and Krishna Hari Puskar Karna as labor attachés to Japan and South Korea respectively.



Similarly, the ministry had appointed section officers Bhabiswor Pandey, Bishnu Hari Upadhyaya, Murari Osti and Bishal Bhattarai as labor attaches to Hong Kong, Oman, Israel and Kuwait respectively. Among the new appointees, only Bhattarai and Upadhya have experience in foreign employment sector.



The Ministry of Finance (MoF) had given consent to create new posts of labor attaches, on condition that labor attaches would be selected through internal competition among the candidates having good command in English language and knowledge about the foreign employment sector.



Sources at MoLTM said Minister Alam has been pressing the Foreign ministry to endorse the appointment of labor attaches to Japan, South Korea and Oman at the earliest.

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