Our incompetent government has come out with the usual budget natak for the upcoming year. We pay our taxes just to pay the salaries and perks of our clowns and civil servants. Most of our civil servants make ten times more than their salary from chiya kharcha and bribes from service seekers and contractors. Yet, our civil servants are not happy that they did get any increase in their pay this year.
As usual, it will be expensive for smokers and drunks. The taxes on cigarette and alcohol go up every year. It would be better if our inefficient government increased the taxes on lung and liver-destroying products by a thousand percent instead of the usual ten percent increment every year.
Let's be known for being the land where alcohol and cigarettes are the most expensive in the world. Lot of our didis who run chiya pasals across the country will have to suffer less from second hand smoke then.
But what we can't understand is why our corrupt government is against those who love to drink juice and eat potato chips? Why do you have to increase taxes on such products? It is customary for us Nepalis to take two big packs of juice whenever we visit our relatives in the hospital.
And we need to give potato chips to our kids to stop them from running around the house and knocking things off that haven't already been knocked off by the earthquakes.
The government doesn't care if our kids suffer from high blood pressure by gorging on instant noodles. They don't care if our instant noodle wallahs add MSG and other stuff but want to make sure that our kids don't drink any juices.
But if you are a dog or cat owner and feed your pets more than the usual doodh-bhat then you can save a few Rupees. Let's hope our pets will get better diet while our kids stick to the usual junk food.
Ram Sharan Mahat knows how to make our lawmakers happy. The budget for Constituency Development Program has been increased by 50 percent to Rs 15 million and each lawmaker will get Rs 2 million under the program. And they will have their say on where to spend Rs 15 million. Most of it will go to their near and dear ones and cadres.
But our lawmakers are not happy. They want more. They make more than a Lakh Rupees a month in salaries, perks and what not and want millions more. These greedy leeches will never be satisfied.
Our government has also promised to provide vocational training to 50,000 young folks so that they may contribute their skills to rebuild this country. We all know that read needy folks will not get the opportunity to develop such skills. It will be only for political cadres and the funds for such training will be divided by our political parties.
Our government has failed to allocate adequate budget for reconstruction and rehabilitation programs. It has allocated less than a billion dollars. Most of it will go to pay off our contractors while our clowns and civil servants will get their cut.
If we had only asked the Chinese for help, they would have finished all the reconstruction stuff in less than a year instead of our grand plan to rebuild this country within five years while our clowns get to loot a billion dollar each every year.
Nearly a billion dollars has been allocated for the education sector. Most of it will go to pay off our government teachers regardless of their performance. Many of our government teachers don't even show up at the schools while many in rural areas spend their days playing cards and drinking local jaad while the kids have to learn without any textbooks. The schools are more like cow sheds and lack clean drinking water and restrooms.
Each of our public schools should first have clean drinking water, adequate restrooms for both male and female students, textbooks for everyone and dedicated teachers instead of loafers who have political affiliation and are in there just to collect their paychecks.
The agriculture sector will get around Rs 26 billion. Even though our government tells us that it will be used to promote the agricultural industry and provide technology to increase productivity in each VDC, most of the funds will not reach the farmers. It will be siphoned off by local leaders and civil servants.
Everything looks good on paper. We will have cold stores all over the country so that farmers don't have to throw away their produce. We will have fish farms everywhere. Our farmers will get to use modern technology and will receive help in marketing their products. But as usual, the government will fail in implementing any of its plans.
Many of our young folks are working overseas. Our farmers have a hard time finding people to help them in their farms. Maybe, the government should introduce a 'farmers work permit' system so that we can hire folks from the SAARC region or we can just ask the Israelis to help us grow everything anywhere like they do in their land.
The dream of living in a load shedding free land in a few years will have to be extended by another decade. Our government is not interested to provide us 24 hour electricity. Instead of begging the Desis and the Dumpling gangs to invest in our hydropower projects and we getting a measly 10% of the power generated, the government can appeal to all citizens to invest in a government fund.
It would not be difficult to raise a billion Dollars or two from our own people. Yes, we will all pitch in if the government can guarantee that the money will not disappear. We can end load shedding in five years and that too by mobilizing our own money to generate 1,000 MW of electricity.
If it weren’t for our corrupt and inefficient civil servants, our private hydro power developers would have completed enough hydropower projects to end load shedding in this land.
It's the bureaucrats and our politicians who are creating obstacles for our hydropower developers. It's the same story everywhere. Our politicians and civil servant do not want to see this country developed. They do not like transparency and accountability. They do not favor meritocracy. They do not want our lives to get better.
They just want to stick to the usual nataks where they get to enjoy the loot. How can these people enjoy the good life knowing very well that they are making money off the sweat and tears of hardworking Nepalis? Instead of being ashamed of their misdeeds, they seem to be proud to misuses our taxpayers money for their own personal and financial gain.
It's time to teach our toddlers that 'C' is not for 'Cat' or 'Constitution. 'C' is for Chors and there are a whole bunch of them and they are our clowns, civil servants, cadres and contractors whereas the common citizens don't seem to exist in the eyes of our evil-doers.
Guffadi is a grumpy old man who blogs at guffadi.blogspot.com. You may contact him at maguffadi@gmail.com
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