Kharel forced to quit NAC due to ‘non-cooperation’

KATHMANDU, APR 02

Beleaguered Madan Kharel was forced to resign from his post as managing director of Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) with more than one and a half years of his term remaining. On March 15, he put down his papers after failing to get the cooperation of the government, board of directors and employees.

Kharel had become unpopular among a section of the pilots after he decided to cut their superfluous allowances. Besides, he had repeatedly refused to appoint new men and promote selected employees as proposed by the tourism minister, sources said.

His moves had been opposed by the NAC board every now and then. For example, the management had tabled a proposal to hire senior pilots to fly the new Airbus A320 fearing a shortage of pilots after the first batch of captains sent to France for A320 pilot training returned on January 25 without completing the programme.

The proposal, however, was rejected by Chairman Shiva Sharan Neupane as he thought hiring pilots would not be an affordable deal, said a board member who did not want to be named. The proposal was tabled at the board after conducting four rounds of meetings. The rejection of the proposal will also mean that NAC would be facing a severe shortage of pilots for all types of aircraft soon, the board member said.

“I thought I would be supported from every section for the national flag carrier’s turnaround, but I was wrong,” said Kharel. “We have a number of problems from before and there are new ones ahead,” he said, adding that blaming each other was not the solution.

Kharel admitted that the resignation was prompted by the cancellation of NAC’s new Airbus’ maiden flight on the Kathmandu -Delhi sector on February 25. “As the head of the corporation, I took moral responsibility for the failure to conduct the flight, but the case should be a ‘lesson’ for the government too.”

When asked why the management had unilaterally fixed the date of the inaugural flight to Delhi without the board’s consent, Kharel said that work like making the flight schedule, flight cancellation and the management of the destinations come under the responsibility of NAC’s management and there is no need to table such issues before the board.

“Proposals to fly to new sectors and proposals that are beyond the management’s purview are only taken to the board.”

Earlier, Neupane had said that he never intervened in Kharel’s work but he blamed him for unilaterally fixing the inaugural flight date to Delhi without the board’s consent. After the resignation, Kharel also earned the ire of CPN-UML affiliated NAC workers union who raised a series of questions and accused him of shying away from his responsibilities.

Sources said that a power struggle between the chairman and the managing director played a big part in souring relations between them.

Relations turned sour after Kharel rejected Neupane’s request to give him the responsibility of at least three departments of NAC. Since then, every proposal tabled at the board was either rejected or delayed, sources said.

The government ended the dual power arrangement at NAC and appointed Kharel as managing director through open competition in December 2012 after being fed up by a five-year long power struggle between the managing director and the executive chairman.

Kharel had been named NAC chief by the government’s Chief Executive Appointment Recommen-dation Committee to put an end to the constant tug-of-war between the two bosses due to their apparently overlapping jurisdiction.

Source: The Kathmandu Post