Bara, November 23

The local bodies in Bara district have been facing difficulty carrying out their tasks in the absence of staffers in the offices of local units.

Efficient service delivery for service seekers has been severely affected, as per people’s representatives in the district. Besides day-to-day functioning of the offices, policy making, budget preparation and implementation of various plans, among others, have been hampered in the district for want of necessary human resource.

Mayor of Jitpur-simara Sub-metropolitan City Krishna Poudel said staff management in the local units has been a challenge. “We are struggling to manage even day-to-day service delivery and there is much pressure of daily operations in the absence of subordinate staffers. A ward secretary has been looking after up to three ward offices,” said mayor Poudel. A ward office requires at least three staffers and they have just one. There are only 40 employees so far in the sub-metropolis office where the requirement is above 150. “Our daily service delivery has not been efficient and effective due to lack of technical and other staffers,” he added.

Likewise, the post of chief administrative officer has been lying vacant for over a month in Kolhabi Municipality. This has hit the municipal’s administrative, financial, monitoring, policy making and development programmes besides daily operation. The municipality is also short of other staffers said Mayor Bharat Bahadur Bhandari.

Prasauni Rural Municipality Chairperson Bhola Sah Kalwar said the municipality’s daily business was hampered due to employee crunch. “We have been working 12 hours a day, from 7:00am to 7:00pm every day. People have lot of expectations and we are not able to deliver,” said Kalwar.

Meanwhile, District Coordination Committee Bara officer Bharat Dhungana said though the staffers serving under DCC were deployed in the local units, they were far from sufficient. He said they had written to the Ministry of Local Development demanding as many as 150 subject-wise staffers. The ministry is yet to respond.