Civil servants continue to disregard transfer orders

MoFAGA’s design to transfer civil servants fails to materialize

KATHMANDU, Aug 1: Minister for Federal Affairs and General Administration (MoFAGA) Amanlal Modi has again taken another ambitious decision, to send employees from easily accessible areas to remote areas and vice-versa. But the higher officials of the ministry are not confident that this decision will be implemented. Because five such decisions made by Modi earlier have been stalled. The minister's secretariat however claimed that the decisions taken by Modi have not been stalled and are being implemented.

The MoFAGA issued a notification on Thursday and issued a circular to send the details of the districts where the employees working in remote areas want to serve in easily accessible areas and vice versa within nine days.

The under secretary of the MoFAGA sees the possibility that those employees serving in remote areas will send details to serve in easily accessible areas, but those employees serving in easily accessible areas will not send details to deliver service in remote areas. “It is not so easy to send employees serving in the Singha Durbar to remote areas such as Humla and Jumla,” he says, “But it is not impossible if the will of the minister and secretary is strong enough to withstand the pressure of the power center.”

Buddha Lopchan, press coordinator of the minister working in the minister's secretariat, claimed that the decision to send the employees who are delivering public services in easily accessible areas to remote places and vice-versa will be implemented. “For this, we have prepared necessary frameworks. The details of the public servants have also been prepared,” he said.

According to ministry sources, in previous days, there have been many attempts to send employees from remote areas to easily accessible areas and vice-versa, but they have not been successful. Even now, one-third of the public servants working in Singha Durbar never had to serve out of Singha Durbar in their lifetime. So far, they have served from one ministry to another within easily accessible areas.

MoFAGA has been issuing circulars to send details of employees since the beginning but other ministries, departments and agencies have not followed this directive. According to ministry sources, the ministry has issued the circular five times so far. But other ministries and offices have been ignoring the circular of the ministry. According to sources, 17 ministries and 40 different agencies have ignored the letter sent by MoFAGA.

The MoFAGA has been asking to send details about the status of recruitment and positions of all the public servants working in the governmental offices. Minister Modi issued such a circular soon after he became the MoFAGA’s minister. After that, another circular was issued about a week later. But no matter how many times the circular was issued, the letter sent by MoFAGA was not taken seriously by other ministries. The minister's secretariat claimed that such details have been received from 25 out of 40 governmental agencies.

Minister Modi had announced that he would terminate the trend of appointing acting officials within mid-August. He made such a commitment at the press conference held by the ministry. According to the ministry, even now 142 local levels are being run by acting officials. The secretariat has claimed that before Modi came to power, 353 local levels were operated by acting officials, but now that number has decreased to 142 local levels . According to the secretariat, the number of 80 new section officers recommended by the Public Service Commission will be further reduced when they are sent to different local levels.

The civil servants are still continuing the trend of not assuming their offices in designated areas by the government, not following travel orders, and staying in the same office for years. To stop this trend, MoFAGA had issued a circular to all ministries, offices, commissions, provincial offices, departments and local levels. The ministry has warned that departmental action will be taken if they do not reach the designated place of transfer within seven days. Departmental action was also given to the office heads who did not send employees to their assigned places and did not give them travel orders. According to an employee of the ministry, the number of employees who have not moved to their transferred office is around 1,000.

Public servants who have been providing public services in offices that are considered particularly attractive show various excuses and do not agree to move to the transferred places. In some places, they don't agree to go to a new place because of the agreement with the head of the office. Another employee of the MoFAGA said that the heads of offices, heads of departments and secretaries of other ministries deny sending public servants in other places assigned by the government and prefer to keep them in their offices.

“|At the local level, mayors, deputy mayors, chairman, vice chairman, secretaries of the ministries and heads of offices do not agree to send their employees to other offices as much as possible. If the government transfers them, they refuse to provide travel orders,” said the employee. The employee says that such a problem has arisen due to the vested interests of the heads of the offices.