Less than half of the service seekers of Kathmandu Metropolitan City are satisfied with services provided by the municipality, an official poll shows, while two-third of them complained that there is no transparency in the municipality’s workings.

The data comes from a field survey report prepared by the KMC itself with 10 respondents each from 15 Wards of the municipality. According to the report, only 45.3 percent of the service seekers said they are satisfied with KMC’s services while a whopping 66.6 percent of respondents said they are kept in the dark regarding the metropolis’ project selection and implementation procedures.

Further, the report states that only 36 percent of service seekers are satisfied with KMC’s service regularity. Forty-four percent of respondents said they are not assured that they will receive the service they seek from the municipality. A majority of the people said that lack of information regarding the services along with misplacement and disappearance of files are recurring problems they face while visiting the municipality office.

The Field Survey 2015 is part of the KMC’s ongoing project to improve its services. According to the KMC, data are based on responses from service seekers on citizen report card and exit poll questionnaires. A convenience sampling method to include respondents of all races, ages and sexes was applied for the report, KMC officials said.

The metropolis provides a host of services such as issuing house construction permits, collecting taxes, registering births, deaths and marriages, collecting garbage, preparing documents for scholarships and recommending for citizenship certificates, etc, to its residents in 35 Wards. Service seekers visit the KMC’s central office at Exhibition Road or its 35 Ward offices for these services.

“This is a very damning report and needs immediate rectification,” KMC Information Officer Mahesh Kafle conceded. “Such reports surfaced in the past as well but our effort towards being more responsible to citizens could not bear fruit. Citizens are frustrated that KMC’s revenue is increasing by the year while development activities and quality of services have lagged behind.”

Meanwhile, the KMC has identified two measures to improve the timeliness and quality of its services. The first one, according to Kafle, is training its employees on Right to Information Act of 2008 as per which details of programmes or projects run by public bodies need to be communicated to people.

The second measure is that the KMC is taking help from the Asian Development Bank to install Municipal Administration and Revenue System (MARS), through which service seekers can apply for and receive any service through an online system and have to come to the KMC only for payment purposes. “We are soon installing the MARS system with Rs90 million in financial aid from the ADB,” Kafle said.

The report mentions that service seekers have suggested the KMC to manage parking and waiting facilities in all its Ward Offices, provide detailed information on citizens’ charter boards, increase daily time for paying service fees and make municipal employees wear uniforms to improve its services.