Federal parliament must enact laws to remove ambiguities seen in the three tiers of government
Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal on Saturday chaired the first meeting of the National Coordination Council (NCC), formed to build coordination and hold dialogue among the three tiers of government, eight years after the federal structure came into operation through the implementation of the new constitution in 2015. The meeting, held in Pokhara, has decided to overcome problems seen while implementing federalism. As per Article 235 of the constitution, the federal parliament may draft laws to coordinate among the federal, provincial and local governments. Based on this provision, a law governing the Federal, Provincial and Local Level (Coordination and Inter-relation) Act-2077 was endorsed in which the Prime Minister shall lead the 20-member NCC. The PM, Finance Minister, Minister for Federal Affairs, Chief Ministers of all the provinces, main opposition leader or his appointee from the parliament and seven members from among the mayors or deputy mayors or chiefs or deputy chiefs of the district coordination committees representing all the provinces are its members.
The first meeting mainly discussed six issues, which included removing ambiguity and duplication while implementing the constitutional provisions, drafting various laws, human resource management and service delivery, developing an integrated record-keeping system of national statistics, land acquisition, and developing procedures of the NCC meeting. The provincial governments, particularly Madhes Province, have demanded federal laws that allow them to operate the police and civil servants on their own.
The shared responsibilities of the three tiers of government must be clarified so that they can function independently. Duplication of grants to be provided by the federal government to the sub-national governments must be clarified while removing similar structures set up in all the levels. There has been an overlapping of works and responsibilities among the three tiers of government, which must be overcome to make them fully functional.
Belated though, it is a positive development that the NCC meeting has taken place since a law to this effect was enacted. The next meetings of the NCC must be able to remove the hurdles seen while implementing federalism, which will become more effective should the three tiers of government develop uniform structures. The major problems seen while implementing federalism are restructuring of the civil administration and police force, both of which have been functioning under a unitary system or direct control of the central government. As per the constitutional provisions, all the laws, which contradict the spirit of federalism, should have been amended within three years of the commencement of the new constitution. Apart from this, clear criteria must be set around the development and social programmes to be handled by the federal, provincial and local level. The local level representatives who took part in the NCC meeting criticised the federal government for allocating budget even for small-scale projects that could be handled either by the provincial governments or local levels. Although the local levels are functioning as per the federal structure, the provincial governments appear to be redundant due to lack of laws.
Event registration
A total of 3,721,115 personal events were registered with the local levels across the country in 2022-23 - an impressive number but not a complete one.
They include registration of births, deaths, marriages, divorces and migration. One reason why people still fail to register personal events is due to lack of awareness as to why it is important. As a result, birth registration of children below five years of age accounted for only 77.2 per cent against the target of achieving 90 per cent this fiscal year. Birth registration as the first identity of a child began in earnest in 1990 in the country after Nepal became a party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Vital events must be registered with the office of the local registrar within 35 days of such events. But only 6 per cent of all births are registered within the period and 77 per cent within five years. Today, registration can be done online. However, according to the annual government report, 151 of the 6,743 wards of the country do not have access to internet facilities.
The registration rate would go up if people are made aware that not doing so would create problems for their children's education or availing state services and facilities.
A version of this article appears in the print on July 3, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.