Our civil servants go on trips sponsored by INGO’s and international donors other than those of the UN when it is forbidden by the government to do so without the requisite sanction. It is disquieting because many of these perks come with strings attached and lead to conflicts of interest and perhaps decisions that are not in the best interests of the taxpayer.

What is it about a government job that explains its enduring appeal? Job security? Check. Perks from the get go? Check. Minimum exertion at work? Check. Inflated sense of self-importance? Check. Prospects for underhand inducements? Check. All of these may undoubtedly figure as strong motivating factors for the hordes who sit for the Lok Sewa exams every year, but one important element that is missing, and often overlooked, are the travel perks. 

Well, they are not called travel perks – no one in our establishment is stupid enough to label anything as a ‘perk’ anymore, lest it fester resentment amongst the underprivileged public, aka you and me. In fact, they are called anything but that and they come in various guises almost always under the ‘capacity building’ umbrella – trainings, study trips, observation/exposure visits, seminars, reflective events etc. 

And the best part of all this travel is that these trips are not free – they are better than that! Most of our civil service lot will get paid to travel with very generous allowances thanks to the system developed by – wait for the drumroll – these very people! Some government positions come with such a sure shot guarantee for travel that it’s not uncommon to hear many government officials boasting of a foreign trip ‘at least once a year’ like you and I might do for our holidays. In effect, some government jobs come with the kind of travel benefits that might make an air steward think twice about his/her career choice.  

For the purposes of neutrality, it must be said that not all of these trips are unjustified – just the majority of them. A lot of these capacity building events are more generous than the giveaways on Oprah’s show, with a few even being completely unrelated to an official’s sphere of work.  The opacity with which they are sanctioned and the liberties taken with respect to procedures and obligations in the form of recording and reporting expenses and achievements are quite evident from the recently released Auditor General’s reports. I mean we expect school kids who go on excursions to the zoo to come up with reports on what they have learned. These are government officials we are talking about and it shows the level of apathy and laziness in the administration ecosystem that they cannot even be bothered to come up with required reports and documents. 

This sort of mentality is why you can take most government employees out of Nepal but you can’t take ‘Nepal’ out of them. Some people call it uncouth and loud behavior, and I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s an x factor (for lack of a better word) that makes a group of government employees eminently avoidable when one is abroad. 

Over time I have written about it a million times, but, even now, the wastefulness of government resources never ceases to amaze me. What’s the point in building capacity of an employee in a certain field when they can be transferred to another government agency, in which they have no experience, simply on the whim of a politician. It continues to happen even today and there is no shortage of bureaucrats with a wealth of experience and expertise in a certain field wasting away in an obscure branch of government in which he or she has nothing to offer – all because of rampant cronyism and politics. 

Moreover, a lot of our civil servants go on trips sponsored by INGO’s and international donors other than those of the UN when it is forbidden by the government to do so without the requisite sanction. It is disquieting because many of these perks come with strings attached (not exactly a secret) and lead to conflicts of interest and perhaps decisions that are not in the best interests of the taxpayer. 

I’m generally loathe to speak for the ‘INGO’s are subversive’ narrative but there are far too many organizations here with objectives and motives that are ambiguous at best and downright suspicious at worst. I could be – justifiably – accused of having a huge case of sour grapes but there simply is no reason for the government folks to be sponsored abroad for a jolly good time when the taxpayer (and the nation) is not going to see any benefit or results from it. 

Anyway, we are all aware of the fact that learning is a continuous process and we all ‘never stop learning’. Apparently, our bureaucracy has taken this maxim to heart because entire generations have come and gone but we seem to be building potential perpetually – never to be implemented but always for some imagined future. One look at the capacity of our current crop of bureaucrats and it does feel like we are going to be doing this forever. Our wait for a capable civil service is just like our wait for the water from Melamchi: Everyone says it’s just around the corner but no one can say for sure just when it will actually arrive.

The writer loves traveling, writing, and good food when he is afforded an escape from the rat race. He can be contacted at gunjan.u@gmail.com

 
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