Over Rs 10 million recovered from RBS staff following CIAA's order

KATHMANDU, May 27 :

More than Rs 10 million have been recovered from the Rastriya Beema Sansthan (RBS) staffers distributed illegally earlier by the RBS in the fiscal years 2011/12 and 2012/2013 as ´incentive allowance´ in the name of reward and prize flouting laws.

Issuing a statement, the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) on Monday said that the RBS recovered Rs 10,915,184 from its staffers following the CIAA´s direction in writing.

RBS staffers returned the amount individually fearing corruption charges.

Amid criticism and complaints from multiple quarters, the state-owned insurance company had stopped distributing “incentive allowance” which it had been providing to its staffers for the last one and a half decades.

The RBS Regulations has no provision for distributing incentives to employees. It is said that the RBS distributed more than Rs 80 million as incentives in the name of reward and advance during the past one and half decades.

“We ordered the RBS a couple of weeks ago to recover Rs 80 million from its staffers within the next six months, which the RBS had distributed from 1994 to 2001,” Sapkota said.

The RBS, however, had not distributed incentives for the employees before the Dashain festival last year following repeated directions from the CIAA.
The CIAA pointed out that RBS provided performance incentives to employees from 1994 to 2001 as “reward”.

RBS resumed the distribution of incentives in the name of advance from 2001 after the CIAA and Finance Ministry objected to RBS´ act of “rewarding” all its employees.

RBS used to distribute Rs 6 million a year as “incentives” to its 200 plus staffers, in which, each employee used to get Rs 19,000 to Rs 30,000 annually.

RBS staffers were enjoying allowances under different headings such as life insurance, uniform, anniversary expenses, last rites, tiffin and special allowances besides incentives, productivity and business promotion allowance, among others.

Other allowances included house rent, house maintenance and external office allowances, inter alias.

Source: Republica