Civil servants avoid Tarai districts

KATHMANDU, Jan 21: The Home Ministry is responsible for maintaining law and order in the country. But what if the employees working under the very ministry avoid working in the districts where law and order is poor?

Senior officials at the Home Ministry complain that employees try their best to avoid nine Tarai districts where various armed outfits are active in recent years. The lawless districts are Siraha, Saptari, Dhanusha, Mahottari, Rautahat, Sarlahi, Bara, Parsa and Kapilvastu. [break]

“When we effect any transfers to these districts, the employees come up with excuses like they themselves or their nearest kin including parents or spouse have taken ill apparently to avoid transfers,” said Joint Secretary Prem Kumar Rai, chief of the Personnel Administration Division at the Home Ministry.

Employees shy away from going to these districts for fear of being killed, kidnapped or being extorted at the hands of the armed groups. In a recent case, Kumar Niraula, who was working at the Internal Revenue Office, Janakpur, was shot dead by workers of Rajan Mukti-led Janatantrik Tarai Mukti Morcha (JTMM-R) on December 15, 2008, reportedly for failing to pay “donations”.

Until two years ago, these districts used to be highly sought after by all employees and many would even exert political influence to get transfer to these ´lucrative´ districts.

Joint Secretary Rai warned of acute administrative vacuum in troubled Tarai districts in near future should the government fail to introduce incentive package including life insurance to the employees. “We have stopped reshuffling employees in these districts at the moment,” he added. “Otherwise, a difficult situation will come when the employees currently working in the districts are transferred to other districts and there is nobody to replace them in the Tarai districts.”

Most of the employees under the ministry in these districts have already served for more than two years they are supposed to get transfer to other districts.

In a bid to ensure regular transfers, the Home Ministry had recently welcomed those working in other government offices like post offices and land revenue offices, which fall under different ministries, to work under it but none actually turned up. “We found that most government offices under other ministries are virtually empty in these districts,” he further said.

Currently, there are some 4,000 employees including 278 employees at the center working under the Home Ministry.

Apart from poor security situation, long absence of top officials at the Public Service Commission (PSC) has also contributed to this sorry state in bureaucracy. Officials say a large number of positions including senior positions under various ministries including Home are lying vacant for the past several months with the government not filling vacant PSC positions.