Kathmandu, January 1

The National Vigilance Centre has written to the district coordination officers of all 77 district coordination offices and chief administrative officers of 753 local levels, asking them to provide it with hard copies of property details of people’s representatives and their employees by Thursday.

As per the Prevention of Corruption Act-2002, any person who joins public office is, within 60 days from the date of joining such office and thereafter within 60 days from the date of completion of each fiscal year, required to submit the updated statement of property in his/her or his/her family members’ names along with sources or evidence thereof to the body prescribed by the government.

The concerned body may extend the deadline for submission of such details for a maximum of 30 days by imposing a fine ot Rs 5,000. If the person assuming public office does not submit the statement of property within the extended time limit, the concerned body may launch investigation into the property in his/her and his/her family members’ names.

Over five months (150 days) have passed since the beginning of the current fiscal, but nearly half of the people’s representatives are yet to furnish their property details. NVC Joint-secretary Rajendra Prasad Acharya informed that many local levels had failed to make entry of updated property details of people’s representatives and employees in online software of the corruption watch body.

“In some cases, the number of positions in some local levels was not correctly entered into the online system. Therefore, we have asked them to provide updated property details of people’s representatives and employees in hard copy and through email,” he said.  The country has more than 34,900 local level legislative and executive representatives.