National
Staff shortage at local units hits development works in Makwanpur
People’s representatives of several local units in Makwanpur district have complained that a lack of government staff is hampering development works.Pratap Bista
People’s representatives of several local units in Makwanpur district have complained that a lack of government staff is hampering development works. During recent monitoring of the local units by the District Coordination Committee (DCC), the elected representatives rued about the shortage of government employees. They claimed the local development projects have been affected mainly due to a shortage of employees.
A team led by DCC chief Raghunath Khulal started visiting the local units in the district to monitor development works, social development and good governance.
During the DCC’s monitoring on Tuesday, chief of Bagmati Rural Municipality Sarkesh Ghalan lamented that most of the development projects in his local body remained incomplete due to the lack of employees. There are also other reasons behind the incomplete projects, but the lack of employees is on top of the list, he added.
The Bagmati Rural Municipality informed the DCC team that there are altogether 350 small and big projects in the local unit in the current fiscal year. Among them only 10 have been completed so far, said Ghalan. According to him, lack of communication in some remote villages of the local body is another major problem of timely completion of the development works.
There are 10 local units in the district, including a sub-metropolis and a municipality. There is shortage of government employees in the provincial and the local level mainly due to civil service integration. More than 50 percent of the positions at most of the local units in the district remain vacant. Tanka Moktan, chief of the Raksirang Rural Municipality, said that his local unit is working with only 40 percent workforce.
The Bakaiya Rural Municipality is also facing the same problem. Though progress on development projects has been better this year compared to the past, development works fail to gather momentum as expected due to the lack of employees, said Administrative Officer Khemraj Sapkota. According to him, 78 projects of the total 306 have been completed so far in Bakaiya.
According to DCC chief Khulal, the people’s representatives mainly raised the issue of employee shortage during the monitoring. He said the DCC team also urged the local units to focus on social development and good governance. The people will feel shift of power from Singha Durbar to the villages only if they witness development in the area.