Kathmandu, Jan. 10: At 9:45am, Thursday, the Office of No Objection Certification Management Section at Keshar Mahal had a number of students queuing up in front of it.

All of them had filled-up forms in their hands along with their attested academic certificates. At 10am, the office staff began to enter the office compound. They started their work only after 10:15am.

Ram Giri was waiting near a window of the office to obtain an NOC letter to pursue his higher studies in Business IT in Australia.

Giri had first approached the office on Wednesday but he could not get the NOC letter as the staff had started their work at 11am and some of them left room number 5 and 7 at 2:45pm. The office closes at 4pm in winter.

He came back to the office from Changunarayan, the outskirts of the Kathmandu Valley, today. According to Giri, the students normally line up in the office compound from around 6:00am.

From three to five hundred students turn up to the office for NOC letter every day but the office has a rule to issue only 200 NOCs. The form submission time is until 2pm.“So the students are compelled to line up from early morning,” he said.

Almost all windows of the office building had a notification about the room numbers that the students needed to go to for NOC processing.

To receive the form, the students have to line up between two gates, one by the roadside and another inside the premise. Then a police constable is seen putting office stamp on the form and giving token number to them. After that, another lengthy queue is compulsory outside the windows for further processes.

At the office premises, a lot of students were filling up their form in groups or basking in the sunlight waiting for their turn.

Subash Sapkota is not a student but he had joined the queue at around 8am for his cousin Raksha Thapa.

According to Sapkota, Thapa wants to study MBBS in Bangladesh. When Sapkota phoned her at 11am, she was at Maitighar on her way to the office.

“I came to the office early in the morning to line up for my sister as we want to receive the NOC today,” he said. He suggested the concerned office arrange the system of digital token for them.
Till 11am, the office compound has been filled with at least a crowd of 200 students.

Kamaldev Yadav from Mahottari and Anu Pandit from Dhanusha were filling up their forms in the compound. They both have to obtain NOCs for studying B.SC. in Agriculture in Bangladesh. They voiced their complaints saying that the crowd and queue made a mess and looked indecent.

“As per its announcement, the government should implement its digitalisation plans in all offices that will help the service seekers like us,” he advised.

Similarly, Chandra Shekhar Bhatta from Darchula, Sandhya Subedi from Banke and Sandesh Khatiwada from Chitwan also had similar complaints to make.

“Today it is not raining. But when it rains, the students have to stand in queues even in the rain. So, the government has to soon set up the system for us to fill up the firm online from our homes,” they all said.

Bhatta wants to go to Australia for obtaining BIT degree while Germany is the future destination for Khatiwada and Subedi’s higher education.

On meeting with Girman Thapa, undersecretary of the NOC section, he admitted that the office was running traditionally.

“Our Education Ministry has been working for digitalising the office. Almost 70 per cent work has been done. All the processes will go digital within one and a half months,” Thapa stated.

He further said that the NOC letter helped the students at the immigration desk of the airport apart from helping their parents to send money abroad for them.

The office staff and service seekers are facing another problem as the canteen has been removed.
“A five star hotel named Sheratan has been under construction beside the office. The hotel owner demolished the canteen.”

Published on: 10 January 2020 | The Rising Nepal