100-day road of MoLD to nowhere

HONEYMOON PERIOD of the GOVERNMENT

Bishnu Prasad Aryal
Kathmandu, September 4

The Ministry of Local Development has failed to achieve the major targets put under priority to complete within the first 100 days of the Madhav Kumar Nepal led government.

According to the MoLD, the ministry had prioritised five major agendas to carry out within the honeymoon period. They are management of the people’s representatives in the local bodies, declaration of 41 new municipalities, formation of promotion board of disadvantaged and backward communities, and national Muslim commission, bringing policy to involve private sector for the garbage management, and infrastructure development in different districts.

Bhim Prasad Dhungana, general secretary of the Village Development Committee Federation of Nepal said that nothing significant has been done in this period. “The government could not ensure local governance by arranging people’s representatives in this period despite commitment,” Dhungana said.

It only repeated the all-party mechanism instead of elected representatives vacant for last seven years, said Dhungana. “There are more than 1100 VDC secretaries lying vacant and people are deprived of local government and service delivery,” he said. “It did not dare to hold local elections in the pretext of state restructuring.”

Dhungana said the UCPN-Maoists instead started forming parallel government during the honeymoon period of this government.

Dinesh Kumar Thapaliya, spokesman for the MoLD, said that the government was unable to declare the 41 new municipalities recommended by a technical team about a decade ago. “It neither formed a promotion board for disadvantaged and backward communities nor shaped anything about national Muslim commission,” he said, adding everything was on process.

The government in the initiation of PM could approve the proposal of formation of high-level special empowered garbage management committee to involve private sector for the garbage management, Thapaliya said. “However, the policy on this matter is yet to be formulated,”

Regarding the infrastructure, it could take little bit pace in different projects in the districts, which were the continuation of the development programmes included in the fiscal budget of the earlier government. “It was only positive nod that government added budget for the VDCs,” said Dhungana.

Dhungana, meanwhile, informed that the Ministry of Peace and State Restructuring has recently decided to rehabilitate 250 police posts displaced during the 10-year insurgency. “It has also planned to rebuild all the infrastructure damaged by the Maoists,” he added. “Otherwise, this government is not different from any of the past ones.”

Minister for Local Development Purna Kumar Sherma Limbu could not be contacted despite several attempts.