On Saturday, the Parliament’s Development Committee instructed the government to appoint Village Development Committee (VDC) secretaries to all earthquake-affected districts within a month and to other districts in two months. The committee also revealed shocking data on how most of the nearly 3,200 VDCs are being run by absentee secretaries: only 780 VDC secretaries are currently based in their designated duty stations. About 2,000 are in district headquarters either because of administrative indiscipline or on health grounds. Nearly 419 positions remain vacant.

VDC secretaries serve as a key nodal point for all government services at the VDC level. They coordinate and implement development plans of 26 line ministries. They also have to sign off on all government-related documents at the VDC level and oversee public funds allocated to it. Their absence in nearly 2,500 villages causes massive inconvenience to citizens who sometimes have to walk for days to reach  the district headquarters, not to mention the economic cost of the trip for poor citizens.

The parliamentary committee is only waking up to an old problem. Since 2002, after the term of the elected local representatives expired, local governance has been utterly neglected by Kathmandu. During the height of the Maoist insurgency, successive governments gave up trying to hold local elections. They created an all-party mechanism to run the local bodies—dividing up resources among themselves. There is massive corruption at the local level.

More than Rs 3 billion allocated to local bodies were unaccounted for during 2009-2010, according to Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development’s (MoFALD) own internal assessment. In fact, the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority has made several arrests in this connection. So the problem is well-known and well documented. Yet, there has been little willingness among politicians and senior bureaucrats to address it.

To be fair, insecurity led most VDC secretaries to relocate to district headquarters during the conflict period. Even after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2006, secretaries were often targeted by armed groups. Yet the MoFALD, the line agency for VDC secretaries, never took serious steps to rehabilitate secretaries to their duty stations or fill the vacant positions. As a result, one secretary has been assigned to look after more than one VDC. This is often used as a justification for allowing secretaries to remain in district headquarters by MoFALD top brass. They also argue that the pay and perks for secretaries are not attractive. Even so, remuneration cannot be used as an excuse by secretaries to stay away from their stations. While politicians should also contribute to creating an environment for holding local elections, permanent government (officials in concerned ministries) must also do their part. To begin with, they should rehabilitate the secretaries to the VDCs they are supposed to be in and fill the vacancies.