• Local Level Employees Union Nepal has termed adjustment process as discriminatory. It  says federal staffers adjusted at local level are accorded undue benefit of promotion

Kathmandu, July 3

Local Level Employees Union Nepal, an umbrella organisation of government staff, has said the employment adjustment process must maintain a just order of precedence.

As per the existing provision, a federal employee when adjusted at a local level is granted double promotion and thus the provision discriminates against local level staff, it said.

Local level employees have expressed concern that the discriminatory provision is discouraging for existing employees at local levels and is likely to seriously impact their work efficiency.

Civil Servants Adjustment Act-2018, has a provision to upgrade a section officer from the centre to the position of the seventh level officer and an under-secretary to the ninth level officer, at local level. The act is contradictory to Local Self Governance Regulation which has proposed to adjust section officer as the sixth level officer and under-secretary to the eighth level officer.

The LLEUN organising a press meet today stressed that the new act would demoralise officials who have been serving at local levels for a long time.

“It is an act of sheer discrimination against local level employees in the name of adjustment. This will only discourage the spirit of local level employees, who ensured smooth functioning at local levels when there were no elected representatives,” said Ram Prasad Poudel general secretary of LLEUN.

Poudel said that the adjustment act has barred local level employees to be the chief of administration, which is highly discriminatory. “We have worked all our lives at local levels with full dedication, but now federal employees of the same rank as ours will be seniors to us,” according to Poudel.

The government had estimated that 41,000 civil servants needed to be adjusted at local levels, out of which it has claimed to have adjusted 31,000.

Besides the adjusted employees, it is estimated that local levels have around 17,000 permanent employees and 4,200 temporary employees.