The law tasks deputy chief of the local government with monitoring plans and programmes. But many elected officials are unaware of their role in the two-and-a-half years of their tenure.
Laxmi Basnet : Centre for Investigative Journalism-Nepal
Ranju Kumari Sah, deputy mayor of Nagarain Municipality in Dhanusha, started monitoring the municipal plans and programmes only from the fiscal year 2018-19 since she had no idea about the process. In the two years since the local level elections, Chief Administrative Officer Ram Kumar Mahato is said to have falsely reported to her that the plans had been implemented. “The chief administrative officer would tell the mayor that monitoring had been done but he got the auditing done without my signature,” said Sah. “Since he did not see my signature, the auditor questioned me. When I replied that I was not informed about the monitoring, he pointed out arrears. Then only did they assign me to monitor.”
“A meeting of the municipal executive decided to make the mayor coordinator of the monitoring committee, snatching away my responsibility,”Radha Devi Yadav, Kavilasi Municipality, Sarlahi
Elected officials of many federal units do not know about the local plan monitoring. “I can’t say about the other districts of Province 2 but in Dhanusha, most deputy chiefs are not involved in monitoring. The responsibility of deputy mayor has been limited to handling cases in the judicial committee,” said Sah. Ram Kumar Mahato is currently the chief administrative officer in Kabilasi Municipality of Sarlahi. He denies that he barred the deputy mayor from monitoring. “We used to inform her about field monitoring but she did not join in,” says Mahato.
According to Clause 16 (b) 5 of the Local Government Operation Act-2017, the deputy chief has the responsibility to monitor and supervise plans and programmes at the local level and to present a report at the meeting of the municipal executive. The deputy chief has the authority to form and lead a monitoring committee. But there is a small number of local governments exercising these legal provisions. According to the Election Commission, of the 753 local federal units in the country, 700 have men as their deputy chief.
Rita Kumari Mishra, deputy mayor at Dhanusha’s Janakpurdham Sub-metropolitan City, has spent nearly a half of her five-year term. In the first two fiscal years, Mishra put her signature where the chief administrative officer required. She was not involved in any programme monitoring of the local government. “One, there was little time spared from work at the judicial committee. Two, I trusted them when they offered to do the monitoring,” says Mishra. She trusted the monitoring said to have been done by the committee involving the mayor, chief administrative officer and the engineer, among others. “All the files related to monitoring would be presented towards the end of the fiscal year. I would readily sign them when they said there is a rush,” Mishra added.
The deputy mayor was reportedly not informed about programmes with a total worth over Rs 10 million. The sub-metropolis has been constructing its building for the past three years. Rs 50 million was set aside for the construction. Having been built, the structure is now being painted but Mishra says she still has no information about the construction contract amount and the money that has been paid so far.
Several subcommittees had been formed for pulling down houses for expanding the road, for mosquito control, and distribution of colour and paint in the Janakpur town area. The subcommittee chaired by Mishra did not meet even once. She later resigned from the panel. “I have no information that she had difficulties in working. Please ask her,” said Mayor Lalkishor Sah.
Not just the deputy mayor, ward chairpersons are also unhappy with the mayor’s working style. On January 9, 2019, 16 ward chairpersons of Janakpur Sub-metropolitan City submitted a 16-point memorandum to Sah but there has been no response.
In Parsa, Sakhuwa Prasauni Rural Municipality vice-chairperson Phulmati Kumari Chaudhary has also faced problems in the monitoring of plans. She took a separate technician along for monitoring the works of roadside drainage at Lakhanpur in ward 6. Earlier, the technicians and staff at the local government had submitted a monitoring report on the plan to her. When she had doubts about their report, she embarked upon monitoring with the technician on her own in the summer of 2017. “I found the work incomplete. The budget had been held back. The funds have not been released since the works have not been as expected,” said Chaudhary. Following her monitoring, she ordered another report by cancelling the first one. “Monitoring has improved after I took stance,” she said.
Laxmi Gupta, deputy mayor of Kapilvastu Municipality, complains that she has not been able to exercise her legal authority to monitor the local plans and programmes. “Not just programme monitoring, I haven’t even presented the budget for three years.” Gupta had filed a writ in the Butwal bench of Tulsipur High Court against the chief administrator officer presenting the annual budget of the local government. After the court dismissed her petition, Gupta reacted: “Who will listen to me now?”
After Gupta knocked on the court’s door complaining that she had been denied her responsibility, Mayor Kiran Singh and chief administrator Bimal Raj Acharya have asked her to monitor technical projects such as building and roads from the current fiscal year. She says she has no idea how other municipal projects are being implemented and how funds are being disbursed and in what amount. “At office, I do works at the judicial committee. On the matters I have objections about, I write note of dissent at the board meeting,” says Gupta.
Chief administrator Acharya has been presenting the annual budget instead of the deputy mayor. In the writ petition filed in court, Gupta says she had been barred from carrying out her responsibility. In his reply furnished to the court, Acharya claims that the deputy mayor had not paid attention to her area of work and the board meeting had tasked him with presenting the budget. “Since she did not attend the board meeting, the chief administrative officer was given the responsibility,” says Mayor Singh.
Radha Devi Yadav, deputy mayor at Kawilasi Municipality in Sarlahi, filed a writ in Janakpur High Court seven months ago claiming that she had been stripped of her authority. In the first fiscal year (2017-18) after election, Mayor Kaushal Kishor Yadav took over the coordination of the monitoring committee. “A meeting of the municipal executive decided to make the mayor coordinator of the monitoring committee, snatching away my responsibility,” says the deputy mayor.
When the municipal executive authorized staff and technicians to carry out monitoring and evaluation in the fiscal year 2018-19, deputy mayor Yadav went to court against the decision. In its ruling on September 10, 2019, the high court ordered the local government not to rob the deputy mayor of her power.
According to Chief Administrative Officer Ram Kumar Mahato, before he was transferred to Kawilasi, the municipality had the practice of signing reports without conducting field monitoring. In the past year, local plans have been monitored by forming a committee coordinated by the deputy mayor. “Monitoring started after I came here,” the officer claimed.
The deputy chiefs of local councils, however, have not been taught the ways to monitor plans and programmes and to prepare reports. Urmila Bohora, vice-chairperson of Apihimal Rural Municipality in Darchula, says she needs the skill for programme monitoring. “The monitoring had somehow been done. With training conducted by the province, I hope things will be easier now,” says Bohora.
Hom Bahadur BK, vice-chairman of Marsyangdi Rural Municipality in Lamjung, has also realized that monitoring is not an easy task. He has found the consumer committee, technicians and the contractor colluding to misappropriate the development budget. “There are more than 400 schemes in a fiscal year. I personally visit areas to monitor projects worth over Rs 500,000. But there isn’t time to visit all,” he says.
BK shares the experience of taking an engineer or a technician around on motorcycle to monitor works. In Marsyangdi Rural Municipality, projects worth less than Rs 500,000 are marked to be monitored by ward chairpersons. But, since there are no staffers, ward chairpersons are busy with the roles assigned to ward secretaries, spending the time that should have been given to monitoring, according to BK.
Regulatory agencies have raised questions about the lack of objectivity in monitoring local plans and programmes. The 2019 report of the Auditor General lists as arrears all the expenditures breaching legal provisions as per Clause 2 (R) of the Financial Procedures Act-1999.Bishnu Prasad Rijal, deputy auditor general and spokesperson for the Auditor General’s Office, said his office started auditing the accounts of local governments by looking at their internal audits. “We list the discrepancies and irregularities found as arrears and give suggestions for improvements in future,” Rijal said. Many local federal units have no programme monitoring directives, according to him.
On December 39, 2019, the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority issued a 61-point recommendation to the local units and provinces across the country. Thirty-nine points of them are related to the local level. They also point to the malpractices in programme monitoring. One point read – “While many infrastructure construction works should have used heavy equipment and gone for competitive bidding, consumer committees are shown to have undertaken project and payments were made without the recommendation of technical and monitoring committee.”
A recommendation reads- “It was found that during the monitoring of programmes at the local level, officials made fake monitoring reports contrary to the provisions of the Local Government Operation Act-2017, they claimed allowances without going to the field, did not clearly mention the name of projects, did not show the actual details of technical examination and prepared wrong technical inspection reports. Such tendencies should be discouraged.”
