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It has to be the most brazen incident of corruption by a local government. In its financial details for the fiscal year 2020/21 presented to the Office of the Auditor General (OAG), Janakpur Sub-metropolitan City presented a ridiculous bill of Rs 710,000 for feeding 803kg meat to the local representative during its two-day city council meeting.

The breakdown of the expenses is thus: the meeting participants consumed 653 kg of mutton worth Rs 653,000 and 150 kg of chicken worth Rs 57,000. There is no mention of how many people attended the two-day extravaganza; there must have been a lot, one can imagine, since the cooking staff were paid a handsome Rs 125,000 for their trouble.  

The meeting was reportedly televised live as well and for this, Janaki TV had charged Rs 15,000.

Then there was the expense incurred while buying ceremonial shawls (360 units of them) for the meeting participants that ate Rs 142,000 from the event’s budget. The local government of Janakpur also seemed to have spent generously (upward of Rs 700,000) to ply the meeting attendees with snacks and cold drinks.  

The sub-metropolis had allocated Rs 5m for the event of which Rs 4.38m was spent, according to the financial details.

This is just one instance of apparent financial misappropriation committed the local representatives of Janakpur city. The annual OAG report is chock full of expense details that do not add up.

The city has presented a bill of Rs 2.3m under the heading of mosquito control program. If you ask Janakpur residents, they only remember the city workers fogging the streets and neighborhoods a couple of times. The city had allocated Rs 4m for mosquito control.

Sudarshan Singh, former chair of one of the city wards, blames former mayor Lalkishor Sah for all the financial discrepancies. He says Sah and his people “were never transparent on how the city was spending its budget”. Millions of rupees were spent during the inaugural session of the city council meeting alone but no one knows the exact figure.

Former mayor Sah is also accused of wasting the city’s budget to publish a book about cultural heritages of Janakpur.  Rs 483,000 were released for the publication of 528 units of the said book. Many were miffed when the book came out for its inferior quality. Worse still, it had the name of Sah’s son emblazoned on its cover.

Incumbent Janakpur Mayor Manoj Kumar Sah agrees his predecessor had not been transparent in city’s expenses while vowing to “play by the rules, be transparent and cut back unnecessary spending”.

The National Examination Board (NEB) published the results of the Secondary Education Examination (SEE) by organizing a press conference on Wednesday.

According to the NEB’s member secretary Durga Prasad Aryal, 22, 640 students did not attend the examinations. He said that 3, 280 students secured 0.8 to 1.2 GPA.

Similarly, the number of students graduating with 1.2 to 1.6 GPA stood at 44, 586 while 100, 594 managed to get 1.6 to 2. 0 GPA.

Likewise, 112, 733 students got 2.0 to 2.4 GPA and 90, 598 secured 2.4 to 2.8 GPA.

Aryal said that 69, 000 students managed to secure 2.8 to 3.2 GPA while 41, 627 secured 3.2 to 3.6 GPA.

According to the NEB, the number of students securing 3.6 to 4 GPA stood at 9, 633.

Nepal reported 564 new Covid-19 cases and one death on Wednesday.

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, 2, 778 swab samples were tested in the RT-PCR method, of which 418 returned positive. Likewise, 1, 676 people underwent antigen tests, of which 146 were tested positive.

As of today, there are 3,929 active cases in the country.

At least 15 people were killed and about 50 wounded during a second day of violent anti-United Nations protests in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s eastern cities of Goma and Butembo, authorities have said, the Guardian reported.

The dead included demonstrators and UN personnel as UN sites were attacked by crowds.

A Reuters journalist reported seeing UN peacekeepers shoot dead two protesters as people threw rocks, and vandalised and set fire to UN buildings in Goma.

The demonstrations began on Monday, when hundreds of people attacked and looted a UN warehouse in the city, a regional hub for international aid groups, demanding the mission leave the country. They flared again on Tuesday and spread to Butembo, about 124 miles (200km) north of Goma.

The protests were called by a faction of the ruling party’s youth wing that accuses the UN mission, known as Monusco, of failing to protect civilians against militia violence.

“Mobs are throwing stones and petrol bombs, breaking into bases, looting and vandalising, and setting facilities on fire,” deputy UN spokesperson Farhan Haq told reporters in New York.

Some stormed the houses of UN workers who were evacuated from Goma in a convoy of vehicles escorted by the army, a reporter said.

One peacekeeper and two UN police personnel were killed when their base in Butembo was attacked, the UN spokesperson said. Butembo’s police chief, Paul Ngoma, said that seven civilians were also killed when the peacekeepers retaliated.

“The situation is very volatile and reinforcements are being mobilised,” Haq said, adding that UN forces had been told to exercise maximum restraint and only fire warning shots.

The government spokesperson, Patrick Muyaya, had said earlier that at least five people were killed and about 50 wounded in Goma. The Reuters reporter in Goma said peacekeepers fired teargas and live bullets at the crowd, killing two and wounding at least two others, according to the Guardian.

Protesters were initially peaceful, but turned violent as some picked teargas grenades off the ground and threw them back at the Monusco warehouse.

Ngoma said demonstrators attacked the Monusco base there with stones and gunfire. “That’s how three Monusco peacekeepers died. On the population side the provisional report shows seven dead as Monusco also reacted with weapons,” he said.

India’s foreign minister said two of the peacekeepers who died were Indian. Ngoma said the third was Moroccan.

Among the demonstrators were militiamen recruited from the bush who brought weapons, he said, adding that the number of wounded was unknown.

Monusco, the UN’s stabilisation mission in the DRC, has been gradually withdrawing from the country for years, the Guardian reported.