Some 4,000 government employees are to be transferred soon. The Ministry of General Administration is reported to have drawn up a list of such employees. The transfer, according to Minister Pampha Bhusal, is to be based on the civil service regulations that provide that an employee who has worked for two years in an easily accessible place will have to go to work in a remote area, and vice versa. However, special class officers (secretary-level) are exempt, as, obviously, there is no post of that rank available in remote offices. According to the minister, the step has been designed to make the transfers ‘systematic and scientific’. This scale of transfers, all the more so with such basis as given, has seldom been attempted in the past. While a full and objective assessment of the government’s move can be made only after the decision has been implemented and after ascertaining to what extent it was properly carried out.

However, the willingness to put a neglected but important regulation into practice should be well thought of, as the regulation seeks to ensure a fair deal for all civil servants. So far, generally speaking, some employees able to please the top bureaucratic or political bosses have been reaping all the advantages of service whereas those lacking in this privilege or quality have been left to fend for themselves in the boondocks for a long time. Therefore, all the details relating to the regulation should be spelled out clearly so that nobody could escape through loopholes, and those found using undesirable means must be subject to strict disciplinary action.

It has been said the employees working in the remote hilly and Himalayan districts will receive priority in transfers to the most accessible of places. The priority, well placed as it is, needs, however, to be matched with firm and sincere enforcement. Of the over 79,000 civil servants, some sixty per cent are reported to be stationed in the Kathmandu Valley alone. This proportion may itself be a fit topic for review. Difficulties in implementation will arise, too. Some of the employees may refuse to go to the place of their new posting, as in the past. Here, the government has to be a strict disciplinarian. Besides, once employees take charge in a new place, they tend to come back to their hometown or the capital and spend most of the year there on one pretext or other, particularly when the posting is thought ‘unattractive’ and situated ‘out of the way’. Those in higher positions have also been contributing to this tendency, by allowing them to stay away, say, on ‘official business’. This kind of ‘privilege’ has engendered undesirable practices and corrupted work ethics in government service. This also explains why government hospitals in remote districts are often without medical staff, government schools short of teachers, and government offices without a head or other employees. Some extra incentives, including financial, could well be considered for remote-area postings. What is particularly important is that the government needs to establish that it is putting the measure into practice without favour. And this would be key to the success of the measure.