18
week in order to enable a large number of British children to come to
Nepal during their school holidays. We are only worried that strong
winds late in March might give us a bit of a problem. As Pokhara nor-
mally has strong winds towards late afternoon we will plan for our
programmes to be over well before this time. This was 'tested' by both
our Nepal and UK Co-ordinators at 6 GR's reunion on 31 March this
year! To warn all ex Sirmoories about Durbar 2015 messages in Eng-
lish and Nepali will shortly be sent to all AWCs.
We have just been informed that all our applications for Pingat
Jasam Malaysia (Malaysian Service Medal) have reached the final
processing desk in the MOD in Kuala Lumpur but the Malaysian diplo-
mats in Kathmandu have confirmed through the British Embassy Kath-
mandu that the issue process will take place only after the Malaysian
government has issued first to their own eligible veterans! At this stage
we can just hope for the best.
The central selection of potential recruits for this year will be in late
November. A total of 126, 63 each from East and West for the British and
60, 30 each from East and West, for Singapore Police, will be selected.
The third tranche redundancy (T3 RD) announced on 18 June 2013
will include 260 Gurkhas as opposed to 300 previously announced. Al-
though dates and numbers for T4 RD have not yet been announced
HQBG estimates over 250 soldiers to fall in this category. According to
GWC UK there has been quite a decline in the number of ex-Gurkhas
coming to settle in the UK compared to last year. The largest number came
in 2011 to settle in the UK. The majority are elderly Gurkhas aged 60 or
over. Construction of Residential Home (RH) Dharan will be completed
by end August this year. Selection of residents will take place in Sep-
tember and will move into the Home in November 13. A lot of origi-
nal residents of the RH Kaski have passed away due to old age.
The new Col BG, Col James Robinson Late RGR, who has a 2 GR ances-
try, visited Nepal earlier this year. He will be in Nepal again for the
BGN/ GWS conference taking place in 1
st
week of Oct. The new Co-
mander BGN is Col S P H Harris Late RE having taken over from Col
AndrewMills Late QGE in the third week of July.
