Metropolis fails to meet minimum criteria

Bishnu Prasad Aryal
Kathmandu, September 14

The Kathmandu Metropolitan City, the only metropolis based in the capital city, has failed to meet the minimum standards set by the Ministry of Local Development.

The MoLD has set criteria of minimum condition performance measure (MCPM) to provide budget under the Local Governance Community Development Programme for the municipalities from the this fiscal year.

“KMC and Khandbari municipality in Shankhusabha failed to meet the criteria,” said Narahari Sharma Bhandari, officer at the Munical Management Section under the MoLD.

The ministry has formulated the MCPM to provide budget under the LGCDP project in the municipalities. The budget of those municipalities, which are weaker in the performance, will be reduced by 25 per cent, said Bhandari.

There are 58 municipalities in the country. Rs 75 million will be provided to the 58 municipalities on the basis of the MCPM, according to the MoLD. MC comprises of 15 conditions whereas PM has 40 points. “KMC and Khandbari were unable to meet even seven out of 15 MC points,” said Bhandari. This time, only seven out of 15 points were made to meet mandatory.

The MC includes approval of the annual budget, audit, analysis, transparency, operation of information section, internal audit, estimation of revenues and identification of resources of the concerned municipalities.

Dinesh Kumar Thapaliya, spokesperson for the MoLD, said that the ministry official visited KMC two weeks ago to collect the documents but the KMC could not produce it. “We told them to submit within a week but to no avail,” said Thapaliya.

Deepak Koirala, assistant executive chief of the KMC, ignored about the ministry appeal to provide documents. “If the ministry asks us, we are ready to provide the documents any time,” Koirala said.

Fourteen municipalities with top performance will be given additional 25 per cent of the budget while other 14 municipalities with poor performance will be reduced 25 per cent of the budget, according to MoLD. And 30 municipalities with the satisfactory performance will also be divided into two groups. First 15 better municipalities will get additional 10 per cent of the budget and other 15 will get 10 per cent less budget.

The MoLD is scrutinizing the performance of the municipalities and collecting documents. It was, however, scheduled to complete the monitoring by the end of June to include it in the annual budget. “We are yet to publish the final report of the MCPM monitoring,” said Bhandari. “We will publish it within two weeks and allocate the budget respectively,” he added.