National flag carrier Nepal Airlines for Government Visits
May 16, 2016 – The will of the people form public as well as the government to improve the status of national flag carrier Nepal Airlines comes to a positive point as the parliament demands for the compulsion in the use of National Flag Carrier Nepal Airlines for the flights of Government officials in their purpose of official visits done from the government expenses.
Meeting of international relationship council of parliament with labor organization today suggested that it is a primary requirement to formulate a regulation stating the need of using Nepal Airlines while government personnel make the visits of official objectives in the expense of government. They have commented that using private airliners for the official visits seems wrong in the context.
A member of Parliament Jitendra Narayan Dev gave an example of India where a rule regarding this issue states the compulsion on use of ‘Air India’ for any government official’s flight and showed the importance in the implication of same regulation in Nepal too. Another member of parliament Kamala Sharma also commented on government official visit in private airliners when the national airline can provide the same facility to them. She also presented a view in need of investigation in such cases when government officials flew on private airline instead of national flag carrier.
The meeting of committee has also instructed Civil Aviation Ministry to focus in the cleanliness, maintenance, parking, taxiway management and the overall management of Tribhuwan International Airport as well as the other domestic airports inside Nepal. The committee also instructed the ministry to make the necessary arrangements for providing luggage to the travellers on time, to manage the unmaintained shops and business places inside the airport, to make a rigid basis for the fixing of the air ticket price and necessarily to develop a friendly behavior on staffs and security personnel of the airport.
Minister of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation Aananda Pokhrel, Secretary Prem Kumar Rai, Inspector General Upendrakant Aryal, director of immigration Kedar Neupane informed about the progress in the improving the different aspects of the airports including the physical structure of the airport. The committee in the meeting instructed to speed up the construction processes in the airport to finish them in the expected completion time and to prohibit the extension of the contract time without logical reasons and to stop bringing variations in the contract. In case of any variations found, the officials need to be investigated as suggested by the committee.
