Kathmandu, February 11

The National Vigilance Centre has made recommendation to the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority to initiate legal action against 17,127 public post holders, including office-bearers and employees, for their failure to submit property details within the stipulated period.

As per the Prevention of Corruption Act-2002, any person who joins public office is required to submit statement of property in his/her name or in the name of his/her family members, along with sources of income to the body prescribed by the government, within 60 days from the date of joining the office. One also needs to submit the property detail within 60 days from the date of completion of each fiscal year.

According to the annual report (2018-19) of the NVC submitted to Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli last week, as many as 500,478 civil servants including 408,841 in the centre, 775 in provinces and 90,862 at local levels have disclosed their property details for the fiscal 2017- 18. However, 17,227 civil servants have yet to abide by the law.

The number of public post holders, who submitted their property detail on time was 96.69 per cent in the fiscal 2017- 18 as against 95.55 per cent in the previous fiscal. Civil servants should submit their property details through the Department of Civil Personnel Records.

Nepali Army personnel should submit the details to Army Record Office, police personnel to Police Record Management Department, school teachers to School Teacher Record Office and other persons holding public office to concerned agencies.

The NVC has written to the CIAA to initiate legal action against 13 local levels for their failure to submit property details of their office-bearers and employees through online software introduced by the corruption watchdog, as per section 50 (3) of the act.

They include Jagarnath Rural Municipality, Dhobini Rural Municipality, Kalikamai Rural Municipality, Balara Municipality, Prasauni Rural Municipality, Bariyapatti Rural Municipality, Kakani Rural Municipality, Naraharinath Rural Municipality, Sarkegad Rural Municipality, Cankheli Rural Municipality, Naugad Rural Municipality, Purchaundi Rural Municipality and Pandabgupha Rural Municipality.

The software helps the watchdog to collect, store, retrieve and analyse large volume of data on property details of public post holders. The NVC has provided username and password of the software to all government employees for online registration.

The online software is a shift to paperless system as envisioned by the government.