While Brahmapur VDC secretary Dev Narayan Sah, Jandaul VDC secretary Krishna Bahadur Dahal and Jandaul VDC´s technical assistant Ram Charitra Thakur have been suspended for embezzling social security allowances meant for elderly people, Kanchanpur VDC secretary Prem Puri, Manraja and Basalpur VDC secretary Bindu Lal Chaudhary and Chhinnamasta VDC secretary Tahir Husain have been suspended for embezzling nutrition allowances meant for children under five from Dalit communities. All of them have been suspended for two months. [break]
VDC secretaries Sah and Dahal and technical assistant Thakur were suspended after they were found guilty of embezzling social security allowances by forging signatures and fingerprints of the dead.
According to Saptari´s Local Development Officer (LDO) Krishna Prasad Sapkota, they did not remove the names of dead people from the list of elderly people entitled to social security allowances. Instead, they pocketed allowances by forging signatures and fingerprints of the dead.
Of the three, Sah has been suspended on the charge of embezzling social security allowances for the second time in a year. Earlier, Sah, when he was VDC secretary of Bairaba VDC, was suspended when a team led by then Federal Affairs and Local Development Minister Narayan Krishna Shrestha found him guilty of embezzling social security allowances.
In Brahmapur VDC, Sah has been accused of misappropriating social security allowances of 22 elderly people.
Jandaul VDC secretary Dahal and technical assistant Thakur were found guilty of forging signatures and fingerprints of the 17 dead and withdrawing allowances in their name.
Similarly, Chhinnamasta VDC secretary Husain, Manraja VDC secretary Chaudhary and Kanchanpur VDC secretary Puri have been suspended on the charge of misappropriating nutrition allowances meant for Dalit children under the age of five.
The suspension of five VDC secretaries comes at a time when reports of misuse of social security allowances are pouring in from across the country. LDO Sapkota says the case in Saptari could just be the tip of iceberg, hinting at probabilities that a large amount of social security allowances is being misused elsewhere as well.
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