Kathmandu, August 2 :

The State Affairs Committee (SAC) of the House of Representatives today decided to direct the Ministry of Woman, Children and Social Welfare and the Ministry of General Administration to immediately make permanent the Women Development Officers (WDOs) under the Women Development Department as they have been serving the country for a long time now.

The committee, in its meeting today, discussed the protest programmes launched by the Women Development Officers demanding that they be made permanent.

“Since they have been serving the nation for a long time on an ad hoc basis, the committee feels right to direct the government to resolve the problem immediately,” the chairman of the committee, Hridaya Ram Thani, said.

According to a member of the state affairs committee, Mahendra Bahadur Pandey, 761 Women Development Officers have been working since about a decade. There are 61-gazetted officers while the rest are non-gazetted ones.

They have been organising a sit-in protests in front of the House of Representatives.

In today’s meeting, Member of Parliament from the CPN-UML Mahendra Prasad Pandey demanded that though their problems and demands can be considered, the government should look into the legal processes while making them permanent.

Another Member of Parliament Purna Bahadur Khadka also said that their problems may be considered, but the House of Representatives cannot order the government to make them permanent in the absence of legal provisions.

“Though the minister concerned has already said that the ministry would work to resolve the problem of the WDOs, such a practice cannot be adopted always. The problems can, however, be given special consideration,” said Member of Parliament Hom Nath Dahal.