Madhes now boasts of full-capacity admn officers

By A Staff Reporter,Kathmandu, Aug. 5: Every local level in Madhes Province now has a full-capacity Chief Administrative Officer (CAO).

Minister for Federal Affairs and General Administration Aman Lal Modi transferred 26 civil servants from Singha Durbar, Kathmandu to various local levels in Madhes on Thursday, ridding the province of officiating CAOs.

Since assuming his office on January 17, Minister Modi has prioritised the replacement of officiating officials with full-capacity ones. According to his secretariat, the minister is on a campaign of 'Nimitta Nimityaanna' (No more acting officials). Thursday's transfer was part of that campaign.

As per the ministry, employees who had been at Singha Durbar for more than three years have now been sent to Madhes to support the local governments as their CAOs.

In lack of proper officials, employees from agriculture, forestry, health, education, technical and other service groups had been carrying out the duties of administrative officers at the local levels of Madhes. Section officers or non-gazetted first-class officers were overseeing the administration in municipalities while non-gazetted first- and second-class officers were working as officiating CAOs in rural municipalities.

Now though, the Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration has deployed undersecretaries to be the Chief Administrative Officers of municipalities and section officers to be the Officers in rural municipalities.

As informed by the ministry, officials from the Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport, Ministry of Land Management, Cooperatives and Poverty Alleviation, Ministry of Youth and Sports and other federal ministries have been transferred to Madhes.

In a statement issued on Thursday, Minister Modi's secretariat said that the decision was a step to ensure good governance. 

"There were problems in Madhes as no employee wanted to go there and there were even instances of elected representatives not allowing stationed officials to work from their designated local level," the statement read.

At the start of this Gregorian year, there were 350 local levels all over the country that were working with officiating CAOs. By July 16, the end of the fiscal year 2022/23, that number had come down to 142. Now, with this transfer of employees, only 93 local levels have acting administrative officers,  according to officials in Modi's secretariat.

Those 93 will also receive full officials soon and all local levels of the country are expected to be made free of acting CAOs within a week, it said.