“The plan of action unveiled today (Thursday) is a clear outline that shows where the government wants to take the country,” Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai said at the beginning of the press conference organized to unveil the plan. [break]
The plan unveiled by Secretary Leela Mani Paudyal in the presence of Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai proposes to reform the way public offices that give services to large number of people function, and develop indicators to gauge progress at government offices.
The 108-page plan of action has proposed 27 programs, including restructuring of ministries and bringing regional administration offices under the Prime Minister´s Office, to achieve the good governance objectives.
It says that existing ministries will be restructured without increasing their numbers besides making the existing regional administration offices effective by bringing them directly under the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers.
The plan has formulated performance indicators for each ministry along with proposing performance-based reward-and-punishment policy for ministries and government officials.
Secretary at the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers Paudyal, one of the designers of the plan, told Republica that ministries showing better performance will be rewarded while those that are found slack will be punished.
He said that the public offices will have to investigate corruption-related complaint within a month and establish mechanisms to hear complaints from people.
In addition, the plan says that the National Vigilance Center will be strengthened to make it more effective in monitoring public offices.
Similarly, to improve service delivery, the government has proposed to establish integrated service centers in places that are far from district headquarters. In addition, the plan has proposed to reduce public holidays so that public offices remain open for more days to offer services to people.
The plan has also proposed establishing "accountable political mechanisms" to oversee works of local bodies run by civil servants.
A 23-member high-level monitoring committee, headed by the prime minister, will oversee the implementation of the good governance program. Secretary Paudyal said the plan of action will go into effect from Friday.
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