Editorial»
Show me the money
SEP 01 -
Numerous media reports over the past few months have indicated that a large amount of funds meant for local development purposes have been misappropriated by a number of District Development Committees (DDCs) and the municipalities. In many cases, funds meant for local development have been misappropriated through the connivance of political parties and the government bureaucrats at the local level. This has been possible as, in the absence of elected governments, all parties present in a particular area are represented on a party mechanism that is supposed to provide advice to the local bodies. As all the parties come together to decide on how to spend the funds they have received from the centre, there is a great incentive to distribute funds among themselves and the local government officials, as there is no local body that can provide oversight over spending. If an elected government was in place, and a particular party was responsible for spending, the other parties would maintain vigilance over how funds were spent. Currently, the parties are all in connivance, and as parties all across Nepal dominate society, and as independent civil society is almost non-existent, there is no one to check corruption.
This has been clear to government officials at the centre now. However, it is recognised that this situation will not change until elections to local bodies are held, and that, being dependent on the political parties, will not happen for some time to come. The efforts taken to reduce corruption have therefore been of a more technical nature. For instance, the National Vigilance Centre (NVC) has recently deployed high level officials to investigate cases where around Rs. 3 billion has been misappropriated when local bodies transferred funds that were in bank accounts that would be frozen if unspent by the end of the fiscal year to another bank account where they would still be able to use it. This is no doubt a positive step and will help control at least some of the corruption prevalent in local bodies.
However, this will not be sufficient. To tackle corruption in local bodies a wider range of techniques and methods need to be adopted. And for this to be done, a detailed study of how local governments spend their money and the various methods in which this spending becomes prone to corruption must be undertaken. For example, it is not often recognised that it is the centre that is partially responsible for the inability of local governments to spend funds by the end of the fiscal year. This is because the centre often sends funds to local bodies very late in the fiscal calendar, putting the local bodies under great pressure to spend a large amount of funds in a short period of time. And it is somewhat natural that the local bodies would, in such circumstances, be reluctant to see the money allocated to them being “frozen” and returned to the centre. This is just an example of how the processes that connect the central government to local bodies encourage misappropriation of resources. If corruption is truly to be controlled the entire system needs thorough revision and greater regulation and oversight.
Posted on: 2010-09-02 08:19
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