"We are planning to resume the process from October 11. The details of the process will be finalized on Sunday," Minister for Peace and Reconstruction Rakam Chemjong told myrepublica on Friday. [break]
The government had begun the discharge process on July 17 from Shaktikhor cantonment but was forced to abort it after the combatants refused to cooperate with a government team assigned for the task.
The process could not resume for two and half months due to widening differences between the Madhav Kumar Nepal-led government and the main opposition - UCPN (Maoist). It was only on September 11 that the Maoists agreed to cooperate with the government to resume the process.
A government source at the Ministry of Peace and Reconstruction said on Friday that Minister Chemjong, Maoist leader Barsha Man Pun and UN representatives are visiting a cantonment either in Sindhuli district or Surkhet on October 11 to mark resumption of the discharge process. A team to be led by an under-secretary will accompany the Chemjong-led team to begin the discharge process.
UNMIN disqualified these combatants as per terms mentioned in the Agreement on Monitoring of the Management of Arms and Armies (AMMAA), which was signed between the then seven-party alliance government and the Maoists on December 8, 2006.
The disqualified combatants are either minors or late recruits. Releasing these combatants from the UNMIN-supervised cantonments and rehabilitating them is part of the ongoing peace process.
Peace and Reconstruction Ministry Secretary Punya Prasad Neupane told Republica that details of the resumption are being finalized on Sunday during a meeting to be attended by government officials, Maoists and UN representatives.
A source at the Ministry further said that the meeting is going to form a technical committee comprising government officials, UN experts and the Maoists. The committee will decided how and when to begin the discharge process in the remaining six cantonments.
The disqualified combatants will have to leave the cantonments and will not be considered for integration into the security agencies, according to AMMAA.
The government initially planned to bring the disqualified combatants out of the cantonments by November 2 when the process began on July 17. Officials said they are planning to meet the deadline by mobilizing more than one team to work simultaneously at the cantonments.
The Peace and Reconstruction Ministry, which oversees the discharge process, plans to complete the discharge process in phases.
In the first phase, the government will impart information to the disqualified combatants in their respective cantonments about why they were disqualified by UNMIN and on the agreements concerning their rehabilitation. The second phase will involve filling questionnaires on what they want. The disqualified will then be separated from the other combatants and will be cantoned in “temporary transit centers.†Finally, the released combatants will be given vocational training to prepare them for their future.
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