Ramechhap, July 14

Shortage of employees has hit service delivery in local levels of Ramechhap.

Each ward office should have at least three employees, but most of the ward offices are without staffers.

There are fourteen wards in Manthali Municipality with only three ward secretaries. In other municipalities, staffers from various offices are given the responsibility of ward secretaries. Ward offices cannot distribute social security allowance in the absence of secretaries.

Manthali Municipality Chief Administrative Officer Bhanubhakta Neupane said the government had not yet deputed adequate number of employees for the local levels in the district. “What’s worse, the municipality office does not have the authority to recruit employees,” Neupane said.

Service delivery at Gokulganga Rural Municipality has also been affected due to lack of employees. Gokulganga-3 ward secretary DurgamanRai has been looking after three wards —  Chuchure, Those and Rasnialu. “I am having a hard time carrying out functions of all three wards,” Rai said.

Gokulganga Rural Municipality Chief Administrative Officer Pradip Khadka said ward secretary Gehendra Darlami was looking after two wards. For want of employees, Ramechhap Municipality has randomly assigned ward secretary’s responsibility to staffers of other departments of the municipal office. A technician at ward No 8 Krishna Bhujel is busy writing recommendation for relationship and citizenship certificates. Similarly, social mobiliser at ward no 7 has been entrusted with the responsibility of ward secretary.

According to Ramechhap Municipality Section Officer Gyanendra Shrestha, nine wards in the municipality did not have even a single secretary.

Ramechhap Chief District Officer Krishna Prasad Sharma said they had no choice but to deploy existing employees to deliver the services. “It had been a real challenge to deliver services in absence of lack of adequate staffers,” CDO Sharma said.