Interview : Frequent transfer of officials barrier to development
Sushil Ghimire joined Civil Service in 1982. He has working experience in various leadership positions in many ministries and worked at the Ministry of Information and Communications, Ministry of Local Development (MoLD) and National Vigilance Centre as the secretary. Hours after the Post spoke with Ghimire, he was transferred to the Office of the Auditor General (OAG). During his stay at the MoLD, Ghimire issued a directive, restricting distribution of financial assistance and donation by local bodies. He spoke about his experience in local governance, development hurdles in the transition period and future plans. Excerpts:
What are the challenges to development efforts at the local level?
We all know that the local bodies are without elected people’s representatives for the last nine years. The activities under the MoLD should have to be carried out under the direct involvement of elected representatives at municipalities, DDCs and VDCs, but the government officials alone are bearing both political and administrative responsibilities at present. The frequent transfer of officials provides them less time to acknowledge the local needs, which acts as a barrier to development. Though there are All Party Mechanisms (APMs) representing political parties based on their presence in the Constituent Assembly, it has not been effective as it is less accountable. And, it is questionable whether the resource from the ministry has rightly been used.
Many say that the role of Local Development Officer (LDO) has been confined to distributing the local budget and projects among the representatives of the political parties. What is the level of pressure on LDOs?
Under Local Self-Governance Act all the development activities in districts are carried out as per the decision of District Councils. LDOs have no role. Since councils have political representation, budgets are divided and shared by this body. We have directed local bodies to invest in the projects that have been found feasible based on the ministry’s study. We have found that a large chunk of budget at local level gets spent in road construction under pressure from politicians. There is frequent allocation of money for such projects, which we think is promoting irregularities. The ministry has issued clear directives to local authorities urging them not to allocate money to open new tracks. The track for some 40,000 KM rural road has been constructed till the date and now the budget will be spent in upgrading them as all weather roads within 10 years.
What are the achievements of the MoLD?
The main focus of the MoLD to date is infrastructure development. We believe that road plays an important role to promote income generating works in the rural community. People can market their products only when they have road access. The ministry has invested in the irrigation and drinking water sector and the investment has brought about remarkable changes. We bear half the cost of the irrigation projects under Community Irrigation Programme, while remaining amount comes from consumers themselves. Under the water and sanitation project, Chitwan and Kaski have already been declared open defecation-free districts. We are planning to declare Nepal an open defecation-free country by 2017. Based on the overwhelming support from the local communities, we are sure that we can achieve it as per our plan.
How would you describe your coordination with donor agencies?
Over 70 percent of the activities carried out by this ministry are financially dependent on the donor organisations. Less than five percent of their assistance is loan and remaining all comes as grants.
Despite the significant increase in the local development budget both by the government and donor agencies the revenue collection at the local level has decreased every year while the amount of arrears too has increased. Can you shed light on this?
Though the rate of arrears has decreased this year, the amount is still high. This is because Rs 8 billion is allocated for the social security scheme. Earlier, there was no good record keeping of the allowance given to senior citizens and widows. Owing to this situation, distributed amount was recorded as arrears in the balance sheet. Now we have proper record of the persons getting social security allowance that has significantly decreased arrears. The provision of octroi and scrap tax has come to an end in addition to some irregularities in other areas of local taxation.
Posted on: 2011-11-22 08:35
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