The government has confirmed ministries for 27 newly appointed secretaries and transferred six special class officials. This decision comes one month after the appointment of a number of secretaries. In the first place, there had been a long delay in confirming the names of secretaries, and most ministries had to do with acting secretaries. All this was due to the disagreement among the political parties in the interim government over the choice of candidates. Now, the unnecessarily drawn-out process has come to a close. A feature of the present decision is the placement of two secretaries in six ministries, a novelty in Nepal that had been started in the finance ministry by the post-Jana Andolan II government. It is said that this arrangement has been made in view of the workload of the ministries. But it is not clear whether this decision has been taken as a matter of principle to be followed in the future too. For one day, the National Alertness Centre has had two secretaries, as one of them retires today because of age.

The secretaries had been appointed also with a view to sending five of them to the five development regions as regional administrators. But none of them wanted to go there, and all of them have therefore been accommodated in the ministries, whereas the regional administration offices now have only officiating heads. This probably explains why two secretaries have been adjusted in some of the ministries. But it reflects poorly on the government. Yet another feature of the current decision is the appointment of secretary in the ministry of health and population from among senior employees in the health services instead of somebody from the administrative services. The recent amendment to the civil service regulations has also made technical people in the health services eligible for possible appointment as secretary. This new provision is neither good nor bad in itself; any judgement should be based on whether the person chosen can do justice to the post, irrespective of the services he or she belongs to.

Since the Panchayat days, the civil service law and regulations have often been amended, from time to time to suit the convenience of certain senior bureaucrats or politicians. For instance, the provisions of compulsory or voluntary retirement of government servants have undergone too many changes over time. For this, both politicians and senior bureaucrats are to blame. Any change should be made to serve a real need — to make the civil service

more efficient, to improve service delivery to the citizens, to minimise wrong or illegal practices, and to remove unfairness of any kind against anybody. Sadly, no progress has been seen on these fronts. That raises questions about the desirability of many of the changes that had been introduced in the past. Besides, the failure to make performance the main basis for reward or punishment of civil servants has been a major cause of poor service

delivery of the Nepali bureaucracy. The system of automatic promotion on the basis of years of service and virtual job guarantee irrespective of civil servants’ records make matters worse.