By A Staff Reporter
Kathmandu, Oct. 16: Newly appointed Minister for Communication and Information Technology Parbat Gurung Thursday pledged that he would do no wrong and would not tolerate any wrongdoing from government employees. Gurung, who was the Minister for Women, Children and Senior Citizens earlier, has been given the charge of the Ministry of Communication by Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli in the latest reshuffle of the Cabinet Wednesday.
New Communication Minister said, "I will quickly try to understand if any employee is on the wrong path or tries to mislead me, thinking the Minister doesn’t know much about communication and information technology.”
He said that giving wrong information and advice would harm the relationship between the Minister and the employees. Minister Gurung said, "I won’t get engaged in wrongdoing, neither will I tolerate wrongdoing from the employees. This is my commitment and agreement with you.”
He said that the Prime Minister had given him a challenging responsibility, adding that he came with a belief that he was capable of facing the challenges and converting them into opportunities.
He expressed his commitment that the Ministry would make public wrong practices and positive indicators within next 100 days after holding intensive discussions with the employees. On the occasion, Minister Gurung sought support of the employees to identify the wrong and negative practices, if any, in the Ministry. “I will be ready to give continuity to the pending projects of the Ministry which are considered as game changers after studying them properly,” he said.
While assuming office, Minister Gurung first signed on a file to form task force to draft policies on cyber security, telecommunication, broadband and information technology.
In another context, Minister Gurung said that maintaining professional dignity and quality among the media and disseminating factual, balanced, and reliable news would be another priority of the Ministry.
Minister Gurung stressed on maintaining effective communication among the ministries to propagate their every good practice through the media rather than letting them just write and publish negative and defective acts of the Ministry all the time.
Communication Secretary Hari Prasad Bashyal said that the Ministry would be able to gain a new height of success after some important bills relating to mass media, advertisement board, and others would get enacted within his term.
The Ministry and the employees under it will always be ready to support for meeting the Ministry’s policies and programmes so as to realise the government’s national aspiration of ‘Prosperous Nepal, Happy Nepali’, Secretary Bashyal said.
From the current fiscal year the Ministry is taking Digital Nepal Framework Project into implementation in collaboration with eight different ministries, he said. The project is about taking public service to the grassroots or the local bodies with the application of latest technology.