Press Statement

Municipal Association of Nepal (MuAN) on Friday (21 December 2018) urged the government to urgently and amicably resolve the ongoing grievances in adjustment of civil servants by taking all stakeholders into consideration. MuAN also believes the move is necessary to abide by the aspirations of the people’s movement and democratic practices.

“The Commission formed to resolve the issue should be more representative in order to address the challenges as the on-going protests will affect the work of elected representatives,” said Askok Kumar Byanju, MuAN President and Mayor of Dhulikhel Municipality, Ashok Byanju Shrestha at the program titled “Civil Service Adjustment Process and its Impact on Local-level Governance” held In Kathmandu today. “We do not yet have an official version on the matter yet but we do realize the demands of both civil servants and local level employees are all coming due to lack of interaction,” Byanju added.

Bal Krishna Prasai and Balananda Poudel, both administrative experts, at the program, also urged the local government employees to halt their ongoing protests to be more accountable to the people. The event was attended by over 50 local government officials, employees unions, representatives from donor agencies, former government employees, and public administration experts.

Kalanidhi Devkota, Executive Director of MuAN, said MuAN’s intention is to facilitate and resolve the issue through constructive dialogues for the smooth implementation of federalism process. He added that MuAN will also come with a draft list of issues to be addressed by the government to resolve the ongoing conflict.

Kedar Paneru, Joint Secretary with Ministry of Federal Affairs, said the government has made a bold move on restructuring and is adopting ways to adopt reforms that evolves in the process.

The Ordinance on Civil Servants Adjustment was published on December 9 in the Nepal Gazette. However, there is widespread grievances posed by both civil servants as well as employees at the provincial and local government levels regarding the provisions of the ordinance.

During the event, the different issues and concerns voiced out during the event included the positives and negatives of the ordinance and its impact on local governance; the grievances resulting from lack of consultation and interaction processes; the appointment of the Executive Secretaries at the municipalities; silence of the Constitution on how the local government employees will be involved in civil service; corruption; the status of social mobilizers and those in the cleaning section of the local governments who are lumped together under the category “other” employees; and giving space to articulations on the issue from the local government employees.

BACKGROUND

Significant provisions of the Civil Service Readjustment Ordinance involve the following:

1. The civil servants readjustment ordinance covers 4 categories of government officials/workers: civil servants; staffs of different commissions, committees, academy and corporations handed over to the province and local level including the employees of the scrapped offices; staffs at the district coordination committee; and the remaining staffs who haven’t been integrated.

2. The new ordinance offers two levels of grade increment for employees who have served in the same position for less than 5 years, in the event they are willing to transfer to the provincial or local level. Officials with more than 5 years of experience may be promoted to the next senior level. Furthermore, both the province and local level may provide for required arrangements of other incentives to boost the morale of local employees.

3. The ordinance bars the transfer of local level/municipal staff to the federal or provincial offices in the future. Once adjusted to the provincial and local administrations, civil servants can come back to the federal civil service only through competition with civil servants from the federal services.

4. Registration for deputation of adjusted employees shall be accomplished online. The ordinance provides that those staffs who fail to report to their designated offices within 35 days may be terminated from the service.