It has been nearly six years since the Department of Land Management and Archive implemented the Citizen Charter with Compensation, a system under which the concerned public entity have to pay compensation for delay in service delivery, but not a single claim for compensation has been made so far.

The charter, which was implemented in 48 land revenue offices in different phases beginning  2013, has the provision of compensation ranging from Rs250 to Rs5,000.

Chandra Lal Dangol, information officer  at the department, told the Post that the department had not received any report about service seekers claiming compensation for delay in service delivery in the last six years.

Lalitpur District Administration Office has not received any application seeking compensation for delay in service  delivery.  

“I have not received any information about registration of application demanding compensation in the last seven months,” said Lalitpur CDO Prem Raj Joshi.

There is a similar situation in Butwal Sub-Metropolitan City, Rupandehi.  

But its Deputy Mayor Gumadevi Acharya said there was no reason to file compensation claims for service seekers.

“I don’t know about the past but service delivery has been better after the people’s representatives were elected in 2017,” she said.

Land revenue offices are considered among the most corrupt government agencies where people struggle to get services without paying graft, according to a survey of the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority.

In the survey entitled “A Study on Status of Corruption and Good Governance in Nepal’’, as many as 54.1percent people had said that they paid bribes to receive service from land revenue offices.  

Despite widespread corruption and service delay in land revenue offices, service seekers rarely complained, let alone claimed for compensation.

In a separate survey conducted by the National Vigilance Centre recently, 98 percent of the service seekers in Mahottari district and 93 percent of the service seekers in Dhanusha district said they did not register complaints about delay in service delivery.

When asked why they did not register complaints, 93 percent of the service seekers in Mahottari and 95 percent of the service seekers in Dhanusha had responded that they did not believe that their complaints would be heard.

The CIAA survey had also made a similar finding. As many as 40 percent of the service seekers had said that they did not believe that their complaints would be pursued, while as many as 20.8 percent of the service seekers had said that they feared the government employees could further delay the service for filing complaints.

“Many people still don’t know about the Citizen Charter. People have little knowledge about the provision of compensation for delay in service delivery,” said Bishnu Raj Lamichhane, spokesperson at the NVC, an anti-graft watchdog under the Prime Minister’s Office. “People usually tend to use middlemen to get jobs done.”

As per the directive on the Management of Citizen Charter with Compensation, service seekers should file their complaints with the concerned District Administration Office within three days.

If a service seeker wants to claim compensation from District Administration Office, zonal offices and/or any regional offices, application should be registered at the Office of Regional Administrator. If she wants to claim compensation from the department level offices, the application should be registered with the concerned ministry and submitted to the Prime Minister’s Office.