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What's wrong with our Nepal Police?

Whenever our Home Minister says 'Good Morning' in his Facebook status, most of us really think it will be a good morning for the country. And some of us, who have spent decades sucking it up to the old political parties for our personal gain are worried because one of our netas might be arrested so it is a bad morning for the corrupt ones!

The Home Minister visited the Nepal Police Headquarters yesterday and attended a program filled with high-ranking police officials. Our IGP almost cried when he talked about the dress of his police personnel and begged for the voluntary retirement for low-level police personnel to be set at 16 years as many of them are leaving early for better opportunities abroad.

What went wrong with the Nepal Police? If you look at the Nepal Army and the Armed Police Force (APF), the top honchos have successfully lobbied for better resources, rations, and perks from previous successive governments. I think our previous IGPs should take the blame for not being able to demand better resources for their personnel and instead acting like puppets to their political masters.

The Home Minister has talked about 'modern policing', better dress, equipment and rations for police personnel. It's a good start, which will indeed boost the morale of our police personnel but at the end of the day, it is all about the money. The government doesn't have extra funds and in any case, most of our police stations have to beg for fuel from local byaparis because the monthly quota gets burned in less than a week.

Nepal Police became personal security guards since the 1990s and the beginning of political interference and extortion for promotion and lucrative postings began during the tenure of Sher Bahadur Deuba when he became our Home Minister in 1991.

From then on, most of the IGPs and even senior ranking officials had to pay off our politicians to get to the top and they themselves were engaged in massive corruption while police constables were left to fend for themselves. No wonder the constables and hawaldaars had to resort to corruption and seek bribes from the public to make up for their lack of resources and poor pay.

Most of the political changes that have occurred in the past thirty-plus years have been due to police brutality during so-called andolans. Our security personnel have always engaged in using lethal means to suppress protests from the 90s till last year during the Gen Z protests. And killings of protesters have led to new political players emerging, promising to reform the police and the system.

Our Home Minister has made it clear that he will not entertain corrupt police officials seeking lucrative postings and promotions and instead will punish them if they dare to seek favors from him. He has mentioned Rs 201, the daily khaja allowance our low-level police personnel get while doing their duty with torn boots and old tattered uniforms and very little equipment to protect themselves. He has promised to change all that is wrong with our Nepal Police.

We wish him all the best but we know that the obstacles will come from our hakims at the Home Ministry and the shady police officers who will no longer be able to bribe their way to the top or seek bribes from the public, bayparis and others to maintain a luxurious lifestyle. Did you know that most of the funds for loan sharking (meter byaz) in this country comes from the illegal wealth of our high ranking security personnel and sarkari hakims?

The first thing our Home Minister needs to do is get rid of the 30-year service rule. After you serve thirty years, you are out the next day. We see many able police officers shown the door in the early 50s when they still have a decade more to contribute because of this rule. We need to change this first and then allow voluntary retirement for low-level police personnel after 16 years of service. Nepal Army already has this retirement thing in place for non-commissioned officers.

Nepal Police faced most of the destruction in lives and its buildings during the so-called 'uncivil' war. But every Home Minister after 2008 never really paid attention to the problems our police personnel faced. They did not care about reform; they focused only on making money from the police, and the police wallahs had to seek bribes from the public to pay off bribes to our hakims and politicians.

There are a few dalals who have been minting millions of Rupees every year from the ration, dress and other supplies to Nepal Police. Yes, we need to import the arms and other non-lethal stuff from abroad, but when it comes to the dress, we can do it at home and our Home Minister wants to do that as well.

We have more than 30,000 prisoners in our prisons. Maybe even if 10% of them can be trained then they can produce the dresses for our police personnel. We have seen many of our former IGPs sent to prison even if it was for a year or two for corruption. We still have to investigate the Armed Personnel Carrier (APC) scam during then Nepali Congress government. The then Home Ministers and hakims got away but IGPs were blamed for the scam along with the dalal supplying faulty APCs for Nepal Police's UN missions abroad.

When it comes to the paychecks, a constable makes around Rs 25,000 and the high-ranking officials barely make 70 grand a month. An average middle-class family needs at least Rs 1 lakh to survive in Kathmandu. How is it possible to take care of your family with this kind of pay?

We need to double the salaries of all of our government employees but then we have to ask where will the money come from when annual tax revenue is only enough to pay them their current salaries? Where will we get the extra few billion dollars (not Rupees)?

Well, it's time to strictly monitor all of our business houses and every business in the country. We lose more than US$2.5 billion dollars in tax evasion, fake VAT bill scams, under-invoicing and other illegal acts. We don't have to increase our taxes, we just need to make sure that our gharbetis are paying the actual rental income tax. We need to make sure that our businesses, especially the big ones, do not engage in tax evasion and other illegal stuff and all of us should pay the actual tax wheneve we buy or sell our land.

I think there are many problems in our Nepal Police but unless we have a separate Police Act and learn something from the IPS across the border and pay our police personnel enough to save some money and get rid of the 30-year service rule, Nepal Police will continue to be the least trusted government institution in the country.

And it's not their fault ... and let us stop blaming the misdeeds of our previous Home Ministers since the 1990s. It's time to move forward and this Home Minister has the courage and the energy to finally bring back the respect Nepal Police deserves after three decades of slavery under the so-called three big political parties.

And our Home Minister has managed to keep his daily 'arrest' record. Today, we have then CDO of Kathmandu arrested for his role in the massacre of our kids during the Gen Z protests. The courts may free all of them and tell the government to wait for the court's verdict in the future but let's all stand up and applaud our Home Minister for his courage and what he has managed to do in the past few days since taking office.

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