Kathmandu, September 7 The Development Committee of the Parliament plans to endorse the Local Level Governance Bill and present it to the full House on Sunday. The committee today held discussions on a report presented by a sub-committee formed to study the bill and unanimously agreed to almost all the provisions. However, lawmakers were divided over the provision on forming associations of elected local levels. Lawmakers supporting the provision in the bill said that such groupings were necessary for experience-sharing, dialogue, coordination and to facilitate the decision-making process. “Even if the provision is not put in place, such associations will eventually be formed in the form of NGOs,” said lawmaker Baijanath Chaudhary. “Therefore, the provision should be included also for the sake of dignity of local levels.” On the other hand, lawmakers opposing the idea said forming associations of local levels was unnecessary as they were themselves powerful. “There are hundreds of associations in the country, how could it be possible to include each of them in the law?” said lawmaker Hitraj Pandey. “So if they form their associations as NGOs, let them do it. There’s no need to include it in the law.” Development Committee Chair Rabindra Adhikari said the matter would be put to vote if a unanimous agreement was not reached by Sunday morning. “Everything has been finalised, except for the provision on associations of elected local levels,” he said. “We will put the matter to vote if we fail to come to a unanimous decision and present the bill to the full House on Sunday.” Among other major issues discussed in today’s meeting were matters related to classification of districts, replacement (either temporary or permanent) of a ward chair if s/he fails to report to work, and utilisation of local resources and local level taxes. Lawmaker Rajendra Pandey said the bill should incorporate the provision of replacing a ward chair who fails to report to work. “What if a ward chair falls sick and cannot report to work for several days, or s/he dies?” he asked. Dinesh Thapalia, secretary at the Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development, said the bill should be clear about resources mobilisation of district coordination committees, facilities and services of local representatives, utilisation of natural resources by local bodies and revenue generation and mobilisation by local levels. “The constitution has provisioned that provincial laws would determine the service and facilities of local representatives and resources mobilisation of district coordination committees,” he said. “But what does a local representative do, or how do the district coordination committees utilise their resources, until the provincial laws are formulated? Therefore, the bill has to be clear about these issues to make it easier for local governments to discharge their duties.” In order to bring uniformity in the laws of all the local units, Thapalia suggested that a model law be prepared and circulated to all local units so that they could devise their laws on the basis of the model law. In the absence of an act on local level governance, elected local level representatives have not been able to effectively discharge their duties. Local governments have so far been functioning on the basis of a directive issued by the Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development.