Kathmandu: The Education Ministry’s two-month-old pledge to set up a help desk for students willing to go abroad for studies has remained a pledge.

Interestingly, the ministry had promised to establish the desk, the topmost programme featuring in the list of its 11 priority projects selected after Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai’s September 8 announcement to launch immediate relief programmes and action plans.

The help desk is expected to provide guidance to hundreds of students, who land in trouble abroad because of crooked consultants. Other priority projects have also remained on paper.

Asked why the ministry failed to establish the help desk, an immediate relief programme, spokesperson for the ministry, Janardan Nepal, said work towards this end is under way.

Chief of the ministry’s scholarship section Laxmi Khadka said they need logistics and human resources for the desk. “We are providing counselling services to the clients informally,” said Khadka, adding that discussions are on to set up the desk.

Four months ago, the Education Ministry had endorsed a directory to regulate consultancy services in the country, but is yet to implement it.

The directory envisages registering educational consultancies at the ministry, regulating their operation, fixing their fees against the courses they offer and making the agreement between students and consultancies legally binding.

Source: The Himalayan Times,7 Nov 2011