The story of a concerned civilian on CAAN

As being a Nepali, we take pride in our history and culture but it seems that the contemporary time does not favor Nepal. Despite encountering problems in everyday lives, we dare to share laughter and live in happiness.

I am also an official at an airline company and visiting the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) is not a new thing to me. It seems that the CAAN has done a lot of goodwill to the operators but something that I found out recently has made me realize the behavior towards its employees and working process of CAAN is not something we can take lightly and the reason for Nepali being backward lies within the Nepalese contemporary culture.

Recently when I visited CAAN to pay the bill, I encountered some event that saddened me deeply. I found a civil servant of CAAN who had spent his whole night lying in a bench outside the CAAN office. I inherently had a feeling of contempt towards the regulations of CAAN, which is a government body and as being one it should facilitate more to its employees but rather than that I could see some inhuman mannerism towards them.

After I talked with him for a while, the person left the bench asking some time to relax for a certain period. I pitied the person and felt strangely miserable for being a Nepali.

After waiting for about forty-five minutes, my patience reached its peak and I went outside but what I saw and heard again dissatisfied me. I could see a black suited official with dark complexion sniggering cynically with another official besides him. When I reached towards them and tried to hear what they were so randomly talking about, negating my assumption which was about the person I previously faced, they were actually talking about an event that had happened in the office. They were discussing about missing personnel in another department at the office and when they complained about it to the head of department, the personnel returned to his position.

I presumed myself in the same situation and found out that the time had passed rapidly .

Since it was the lunch time, I walked towards the cafeteria where I saw more chaos and heard more of the similar discussions.

People were giggling around in the cafeteria and I found the same person lying in the bench there in between the laughter and I was quite relieved. In fact he asked me that if was work was done and told me to have a cup of tea in a pleasant manner.

I saw his face and pitied him and then pitied myself for being a Nepali and dreamt about moving to a foreign country where I could get a good facility and some professionalism but then I wondered what my country will face if a young man like me didn’t toil in his own soil.

In that predicament, I found that I had finished my tea. Then I moved to the cabinet of the same person who asked me tea. A suited young man entered into his cabinet and asked if the work that he had asked to do was finished or not in a polite way. The cabinet official told him that the work had already been completed a few days ago and listening to that the suited man went away with some satisfaction in his face.

But, my pity had no importance since the man asked me to excuse him as it was time for his lunch break which clearly showed his familiarity towards the carelessness of the management of the office and his lenience towards the behavior done to him by the employer. On top of that, my time had been wasted and my work wasn’t done.

But I had faced these kinds of events before and we Nepali can relate it to other government bodies where the usual works are done in these manner. So, I returned home with full of anger and dissatisfaction and the way I was treated at that day.

These events forced me to question if I was also a Nepali and if they had the right to treat me in that manner. I wondered how much longer will we tolerate such carelessness and why I didn’t speak against what I had faced today.

I wish that people would not have to face such event time and again and hope that our country will improve its civil services.