ARTUS

The Finance and Labor Relation Committee (FLRC) of parliament has instructed the government not to proceed with the decision of distributing ´Incentive Allowance´ to Nepal Telecom (NT) employees.

A meeting of FLRC sub-committee issued the directive urging the government to postpone all the processes till Thursday when a full meeting of FLRC is scheduled to discuss the controversial decision.

The NT board had received the proposal for distribution of incentive allowances endorsed by its Annual General Meeting recently before getting the final permission from the Ministry of Finance.

AGM of NT held in March this year had taken the decision to distribute the incentive allowances worth Rs 458.9 million out of the total profit of Rs 10.27 billion earned during the fiscal 2008/09. NT has already distributed a bonus worth Rs 301.1 million to its employees.

The FLRC´s sub-committee has also directed the government to provide the newly devised formula for distributing incentives for study. NT had decided to distribute the incentives under an old formula which allows distribution of 4.5 percent of the total profit as incentives to the employees.

In response to a complaint lodged by share holders, Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority(CIAA) also has been looking into the case. NT has around 33,000 shareholders.