The Land Revenue Offices, government hospitals and health centres and local government bodies are among the offices where service seekers have to bribe officials, face delays, and experience nepotism and abuse from middlemen while availing of the services, the Transparency International-Nepal reported on Monday.

According to the TI-Nepal, service seekers face hassles in getting timely services from these offices where the influence of middlemen is high.

The report titled “A Survey on Public Service Delivery 2016” has identified the Land Revenue Offices (LROs) as the most corrupt offices, followed by the local bodies and Transport Management Offices, with most respondents saying they have to pay bribes to get their works done there.

The TI-Nepal’s Public Delivery Survey had shown last year that service seekers were forced to pay the highest amount (as much as Rs25,000) in bribe to officials to formalise land deals.

In terms of delayed services, government hospitals were the worst, followed by the LROs and local bodies. In an indication of strong influence of middlemen, the survey shows service seekers are abused/harassed by the middlemen mostly in the LROs, followed by local bodies and transport offices.

The largest number of the people interviewed faced middlemen’s abuse by the LROs, followed by local bodies and the District Administration Office while nepotism was rife mostly in local bodies during service delivery, states the survey. 

The lowest number of complaints were about the District Forest Offices where the number of service seekers remains relatively low.

Since government offices with large numbers of service seekers were creating 

unnecessary troubles for the public, focus should be on improving their services, said Prakash Chandra Bhattarai, the main researcher. 

“As the offices delayed their services, a large number of people resorted to bribe for getting their works done on time,” he said.

Bhattarai added that corruption was growing in public offices in the absence of community participation in the decision-making process and the poor complaint handling mechanism.

Despite facing troubles, most of the people (88.4 percent) do not complain about the poor services that they experience at government offices. 

Most of the respondents (38.4 percent) did not know where to lodge complaints while many (29.2 percent) thought it was useless to complain, according to the survey. Instead, many service seekers were found to be registering complaints with the anti-graft agency, Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority.

Despite the grievances, people’s perception of service delivery  from government offices improved in 2016 compared to 2015. 

Speaking at the report launching ceremony in the Capital, Chief Secretary 

Som Lal Subedi blamed the bleak situation on the prolonged political instability in the country.

Hassles in accessing services

Offices where bribery is common:

Land Revenue Offices, local bodies and Transport Management Office

Delayed service delivery:

 Government hospitals, Land Revenue Offices and local bodies

Abused by middlemen:

Land Revenue Offices, local bodies and Transport Office