The Office of the President wants an additional Rs 120 million to buy vehicles to escort our President around town. I think our government wallahs think that it is better to waste our taxpayers’ money rather than saving us a few Rupees.

Earlier, our incompetent government had agreed to provide Rs 40 million but I guess that was not enough for our folks working for the President. I don’t think our Madame President had any say on this matter but her personal assistants and our sarkari hakims must have done their homework well and wanted to make quick bucks on the deal.

It seems that only netas and thulo manchheys need security in this land but we still don’t know why they are so scared of the public whom they have sworn to serve. We can understand President Trump wanting an ‘Iron Man’ suit or a Batmobile but why does our President need more security and more vehicles than even the Desi President across the border?  It seems that our President has to worry about security more than the Chinese President or even Putin. 

North Korea is not going to nuke us anytime soon. Our President is not under threat from any internal or external enemies. The job of the President is to attend all the public functions in Tundikhel, visit foreign lands to get some fresh air and actually do nothing at all.

Why do we need to spend hundreds of millions of Rupees on vehicles for our so-called VVIPs when our government has dozens of luxury vehicles sitting idle and even those have not been maintained in years? Why do our netas need new vehicles and waste our taxpapayers money every year?

The President’s Office already has eight luxury vehicles but I guess that is not enough for our head of state. Our President should be an example to the world and go ahead and buy an electric vehicle instead. But our thulo mancheys do not think like the common folks. They are above the law and they think that wasting taxpayers’ money for their own benefit is the right thing to do.

Our civil servants have already spent more than a billion Rupees on foreign visits in the past sixty days. More than 1,400 sarkari chors had fun going on vacation to foreign lands at the expense of our taxpayers.

Yes, attending conferences, workshops and training nataks in foreign lands seem like vacation to our sarkari hakims. They get daily allowances and chiya kharcha and they get to save the money and years later, when the CIAA asks them how they managed to build a mansion in the Valley, they will tell the world that they saved all the ‘vacation’ money or wrote books that brought in millions of Rupees. Just ask our Director General of the Inland Revenue Department, Chudamani Dai! We all know that he managed to make millions while he offered billions of Rupees to our netas. But at the end of the day, the CIAA can only arrest our civil servants but seem to have no clue on how to go after our chor netas as well! Our former IGPs go to jail for the ‘Sudan Scam’ and pay only a few thousand Rupees fine as well while our netas who made millions from the deal do not need to worry about going to jail at all.

Our government had earlier attempted to discourage such foreign vacation packages but I guess nobody can tame our corrupt civil servants. After all, our netas need our sarkai chors because when it comes to promotions and lucrative transfers, our civil servants do offer boras of cash to our clowns. That’s how our system works and not much has changed in the past three decades.

It seems that we, the people, have no choice but put up with the nataks of our netas and sarkari hakims. Every year, landslides and floods kill hundreds of folks in this country and the government doesn’t do anything to minimise such disasters. Our Capital has become Dustmandu and neither our government agencies nor the contractors who are working on the roads in our Valley seem to be interested to minimise the problems faced by the people. After all, our netas drive around in luxury vehicle with their windows closed while we, the people have to use public transportation and breathe in all the fumes and dust!

And in the last month of the fiscal year, our government agencies go on a spending spree, making sure they spend billions of Rupees and it seems that we cannot hold any of our civil servants and netas accountable. It seems that we, the people have given up and our civil society leaders have all disappeared ever since Gyanu Uncle left the building. It seems that we, the people participated in peoples’ movement to topple the Panchayati system and then the ‘House of Shah’ only to be ruled by mini-maharajas and their courtiers.  Every year, our incompetent government fails to spend even half of the capital budget and nobody seems to care.

How can our chors who do not even follow democratic principles in their own parties teach us all about democracy? How can our buffoons who do not want to give any opportunity to women, minorities and youth leaders in their own parties teach us about inclusiveness? How can our clowns who only want kickbacks from contractors, civil servants, fake-VAT bill byaparis and other con artists teach us about open and transparent society?  It seems that economic progress for our netas is about making as much money for themselves while stealing from our national coffer and the people while the country goes broke!

Guffadi is a grumpy old man who blogs at guffadi.blogspot.com. You may contact him at [email protected]