It has come to light that seven regional offices of Higher Secondary Education Board have embezzled around Rs 9.4 million the last fiscal.
Among them, Biratnagar regional office expenditure exceeded the budget ceiling by Rs 5.956 million, without approval.
Interestingly, HSEB council had proposed the estimates of each regional office at the HSEB apex assembly yesterday for approval, whereas, assembly members slammed the prevailing irregularity and demanded investigation.
Speaking at the assembly, member Bauwalal Shah demanded reimbursement from the involved party for illegal expenditure.
Likewise, Nepalgunj office overspent Rs 9.8 million whereas Janakpur office exceeded Rs 9.3 Lakhs. However, the assembly did not address Shah’s demand for forming a probe committee. Rather a committee was formed to correct the proposed budget document to make it error-free.
Other regional offices — Hetauda, Kathmandu, Dhangadi, Pokhara have misappropriated Rs 8.4 lakh, Rs 4.8 lakh, Rs 1.4 lakh and Rs 29,925 respectively.
Hari Sharan Wagle was chief of Biratnagar regional office last fiscal. Likewise, Dhanapati Bhetwal headed the Nepalgunj office and Prakash Kafle was chief in Janakpur. Hetauda office chief was Gobinda Khaniya.
Asked about the prospects of getting back the money, HSEB vice-chairman pledged that HSEB would get the amount reimbursed from the concerned heads of regional offices.
In the assembly, Community Higher Secondary School Teachers Union Dilli Sigdel charged HSEB officials of stealing the money collected from students for registration and examination forms.
HSEB has proposed to collect Rs 484 million from students from forms this fiscal The amount is more than half of HSEB’s total annual budget. HSEB has done nothing except conduct examination and publish results of grades 11 and 12.
(News by: Rudra Pangeni: Source: The Himalayantimes)
