KATHMANDU, JAN 17 - Having deferred it for more than two months, the cabinet on Thursday approved with condition the proposal of the Ministry of Defence (MOD) to add 6,400 more army men to the Royal Nepalese Army (RNA).
A highly placed government source said that the cabinet sanctioned the recruitment of only 6,400 soldiers though the MOD had demanded to add 9,100 more. Moreover, the cabinet has said that the RNA should cut back its total strength to current 70,000 by 2012.
According to the MOD proposal, almost all the new recruits would be deployed for the security of vital installations ranging from airports, hydropower stations and telecommunication towers, among others.
To ease financial burden on the government, the cabinet has also decided that 50 per cent of the cost of deployment in the vital installations will have to be borne by concerned institutions. The RNA is required to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the institutions before the deployment.
With the approval of the proposal, state will have to bear an additional financial burden of Rs 800 million for the first year of recruitment and thereafter Rs 640 million every year. According to one estimate, the state, on average, spends around Rs 125,000 to train an army recruit during the first year and Rs 100,000 by way of salary and other costs thereafter.
A Finance Ministry source also informed that the ministry is planning to divert Rs 1.70 billion allocated for the election of House of Representatives in the current fiscal year’s budget to meet the recruitment and training costs."As the election is unlikely in the near future, the diversion of the fund to meet the security needs would not upset the fiscal balance," said ministry source.
The RNA has already demanded over Rs 1.8 billion on top of the budget allocated for this fiscal year "to improve, among others, surveillance and intelligence capabilities." The government has already allocated Rs 7.18 billion for the RNA.
The Defence Ministry in its proposal has argued that since more than 8,000 RNA troops have been currently engaged in the security of vital installations it needed additional troops to reinforce its anti-Maoist operation.
Since the mobilisation of the RNA against the Maoist rebels in November 2001, the number of RNA personnel has soared up by over 20,000 troops in the last 24 months.Posted on: 2004-01-18 02:36

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