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| << March09, 2005 - [India Thinkers Net]No river linking scheme on Eastern Zone ,???Neglect of women??™ in matrilineal set-up decried |
March13, 2005 - India Thinkers Net >> |
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1] From: "River Basin Friends\(RVC\)" <riverbasinfriends@yahoo.co.in> Date: Thu Mar 10, 2005 11:39am Subject: 10% Rly Budget--Road Bridge across the river Brahma-putra at Bogibeel. 10 % for NE in Rail Budget mooted New Delhi, March 08: A Parliamentary Committee has recommended that the Ministry of Railways should earmark 10 per cent of the total railway budget as envisaged in the "new initiatives" for North east region instead of 10 per cent from the budgetary support available for general distribution alone as was being done at present. On the new initiative taken by the then Prime Minister in 1996, a guideline has been laid down for all the Union Ministries and departments to earmark 10 per cent of their budget for the specific projects in the North eastern states. The North eastern region comprises of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, Tripura, Mizoram and Sikkim which falls under the zonal jurisdiction of Northeast Frontier Railway based at Maligaon, Guwahati. The Committee, in its six report for 2004-05 which was tabled in Parliament, found that in North east region, Railways were spending 10 per cent out of the budgetary support available for general distribution for development of rail infrastructure. Taking exception to diversion of funds exclusively earmarked for North east region, the Committee agreed that enroute bottlenecks should be removed and suggested that the funds for projects enroute to the region should be given top priority and sanctioned from railway budget and not from the funds earmarked for the region. It also recommended that norms of financial viability for projects in the region should be relaxed since development and expansion of rail network was imperative for socio-economic development apart from strategic relevance. The Parliamentary Committee also strongly recommended that the economic viability of a project should be determined on a more rational and realistic basis keeping in view the prevailing interest rate. Six new lines and five gauge conversion projects with a total investment of Rs 6,494 crore are at present in execution in the region, many of which were sanctioned and included in the budget prior to the year 1999. However, the progress work in majority of these projects are minimal. The Committee was also of the view that the Ministry of Surface Transport and Railways should jointly fund the Road Bridge across the river Brahma-putra at Bogibeel. The cost shared by these ministries is Rs 666 crore and Rs 1,101 crore respectively. --------- 2] Landowners ???okay??™ uranium mining Urjent action is the need of hour ravi Landowners ???okay??™ uranium mining SHILLONG, March 9: Around 300 landowners and residents in and around Domiasiat, the proposed site for uranium mining in West Khasi Hills, have asked the Government to grant permission to mine uranium to the Uranium Mining Corporation of India Limited if there is no threat of environmental or health hazards. Submitting a memorandum to Chief Minister DD Lapang this evening, the landowners said, "Clarification should be sought from the UCIL on the possibility of dangers to the environment and health of the people. The Government should grant the no objection certificate to mine uranium in the proposed site if there are no such dangers." The memorandum submitted by the landowners from Kylleng-Pyndeng-Sohiong-Mawthabah, showing their inclination towards the project, has added a new twist to the contentious issue of uranium mining in the State. The landowners also called for a trilateral agreement among the State Government, the UCIL and themselves to ensure all-round development in the areas adjacent to the proposed mining site. "We want schools, electricity, water supply, roads and communication," the landowners stated in the memorandum. They also demanded that the name of the project should be changed from Domiasiat to Kylleng-Pyndeng-Sohiong-Mawthabah project. It may be mentioned here that the Khasi Students??™ Union (KSU), the Heritage Environment Sites Preservation Organizations (HESPO) and the Meghalaya People Human Rights??™ Commission (MPHRC) are opposing the proposed uranium project. The Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council (KHADC) has also delayed the public rally proposed to be held to mobilize public opinion in the matter. No tentative date has been fixed in spite of the Government??™s instruction to the Council to hold the rally. KHADC chief executive member P Tynsong told The Sentinel today, "We will first visit Jadugada to get a first-hand report." "We will also ask the UCIL for a detailed report before coming up with a decision," he added. ------------- 3] Internal corruption and misconduct in World Bank USA Watchdog group:Wolfensohn punishes World Bank whistleblowers Dow Jones Newswires, 08 March 2005 By JOSEPH REBELLO WASHINGTON -- A private watchdog group on Tuesday accused World Bank President James Wolfensohn of participating "personally" in retaliation against employees who complain of internal corruption and misconduct, an allegation the bank called "absolutely false." A top attorney for the Government Accountability Project, which just eight months ago issued a report saying the bank's whistleblower protections were the best of any international development bank's, said at a news conference the group will publish a new report revising that judgment. The GAP, a public-interest law firm, had been "snookered" by the bank, said the attorney, Tom Devine. "What we've learned in reality is that to an unprecedented degree in our existence since 1977 (Wolfensohn) is personally involved in retaliation against whistleblowers," Devine said. In its report last year, the GAP cited just one instance in which a bank whistleblower alleged that Wolfensohn personally retaliated against him. Since then, he said, several other current and former bank employees have said Wolfensohn played a direct role in their mistreatment by the bank. The GAP declined to identify them. "What we're finding is that it wasn't an aberration. He was meeting with the whistleblowers, promising to take care of them - and then taking care of them," Devine said, sarcastically. "Most of the folks who are coming to us said they actually checked in with President Wolfensohn because they were taking him at his word. Their message to us was very bitter - that it was a trap." Damian Milverton, a spokesman for the bank, called Devine's allegations "absolutely false." The allegations on Tuesday prompted both the bank and the GAP to make public a batch of rancorous letters its officials have written to each other over the last few months. The correspondence shows that discussions between the GAP and the bank, cordial until last summer, have ended in accusation and counter-accusation. Last December, the bank's deputy general counsel, Scott B. White, contended in a letter to Devine that the GAP's motives for criticizing the bank were less than pure. He said bank officials were "taken aback" last summer by the group's "suggestion that it be hired to help the bank fix what GAP had identified in its study as problems with the bank's whistleblower protections." He added:"The bank now knows that GAP is not an impartial party, but a legal practice in active search of clients to represent in whistleblower litigation." Melanie Beth Oliviero, director of the GAP's international program, said Tuesday that White's assertion was false. The group, she said, never sought money from the bank and was simply offering free assistance. "We think we just got the whistleblower treatment - they chose to attack us rather than address the content of what we were saying," she said. The GAP was formed in the 1970s to defend the rights of whistleblowers after a government employee, Daniel Ellsberg, angered the Nixon administration by going public with a secret government history of the war in Vietnam. It provides free legal assistance to whistleblowers. Aided by a grant from the Ford Foundation, the group last year began focusing on the World Bank. The bank employs about 10,000 people around the world and lends about $20 billion each to finance development projects in some of the poorest countries. Wolfensohn, who became president in 1995 and is scheduled to step down in June, made it a top priority of his term to tighten the bank's sprawling bureaucracy and to fight mismanagement and corruption associated with its lending activities. But his critics still say he didn't do enough. Tuesday, current and former World Bank employees testified at the GAP news conference that they were shunned, ignored or demoted when they complained of mismanagement within the bank. Abdirahman Abdi, a former Wall Street accountant who joined the bank in the early 1990s, said that bank managers sometimes withheld bad news from Wolfensohn because they were afraid of complicating his policy goals. In late 1997, for example, the bank discovered that it had understated its borrowing costs by $65 million in a $1 billion global bond offering. That problem, Abdi said, was tied to an accounting system whose flaws had been known for six to seven years. "My management ... drafted a memo to Mr. Wolfensohn, explaining we didn't know of this problem until three months ago." Abdi said he felt obligated to report the falsity of the memo to ethics officers at the bank. But they referred the matter to auditors, who solicited supporting documents from Abdi and then turned those documents over to his managers, Abdi said. That enabled his bosses to identify him. Abdi said he was "eventually terminated" for that event. Yang-Ro Yoon, a senior human development economist who still works for the bank, said her career at the bank started to suffer after she reported a $15 million cost-overrun in a school-building project in Kenya. One boss, she said, reprimanded her for "being too tough on the client" and "sent me on the road to termination." Yoon, however, challenged her dismissal before an internal panel of judges that reviews employment disputes and won reinstatement. But that wasn't the end of her trouble. "Initially it looked like I was able to beat the odds by being the first person and the only person so far to win reinstatement through the tribunal process," she said. "But it was an illusion: the bank was never willing to reinstate me in good faith." She said: "Here are just a few aspects of what it means to be reinstated at the World Bank. First it takes three years to prove wrongful-termination decisions; after I had won, it takes another five months to be given work. "Second, the bank absolutely refused back pay. I've lost more than two-and-a-half years' salary plus pension benefits. And then at the end of the day, I was stuck with $30,000 in lawyer bills. Third, my re-entry salary was set at exactly the same dollar amount I earned three-and-a-half years earlier. As you know, the bank has quite a few economists, but they don't seem to understand inflation." At the end of that struggle, Yoon said, she was "massively ostracized by my colleagues, with the complete complicity of my direct managers." Devine, the GAP's legal director, said such cases belie Wolfensohn's frequent assertions that the bank has grown more open and more assertive about fighting corruption under his leadership. "What we've learned is behind the rhetoric, his legacy is one of secrecy enforced by repression," he said. Bank officials denied that most bank employees are afraid to make allegations of misconduct, noting that new data from the bank shows big increases in the number of employees willing to identify themselves in reporting misconduct. Edith Wilson, a bank spokeswoman, said the bank's latest report on corruption associated with its activities showed an "absolute increase" in the number of employees willing to identify themselves in reporting misconduct. That report showed that 56% of the allegations investigated by the bank's Department of Institutional Integrity came from bank employees. The reported cited evidence of "an improvement in the reporting environment, where staff feel comfortable and protected in making good-faith allegations, and confident that the institution will take their complaints seriously." Even so, the report said, the bank is reviewing its "policies and procedures relating to protecting whistleblowers from retaliation to evaluate any areas for improvement in light of evolving U.S. and international best practices ... and the bank's status as an international organization." -By Joseph Rebello, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-9279; Joseph.Rebello@d... ============================================ ravindranath ,Rural Volunteers Centre,Po+Vill-Akajan. Via-Silapathar District-Dhemaji.787059,Assam. India. Mobile-09435089275 phone-0091-3753-246306/246436/Fax-246353/245758(if BSNL is functional) E mail. rvcassam@g... assamravi@y... ----------------------------------------------------------- INDIA THINKERS NET quote Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves: William Pitt, Earl of Chatham ------------------------------------------------------------ |
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| << March09, 2005 - [India Thinkers Net]No river linking scheme on Eastern Zone ,???Neglect of women??™ in matrilineal set-up decried |
March13, 2005 - India Thinkers Net >> |
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