Making Civil Service Result-oriented

Considered as the permanent executive of a nation, the civil service is crucial for delivering services to people, facilitating the elected people’s representatives in formulating laws and policies, and carrying out development activities. Unlike the bureaucracy, the political executive is temporary in nature as it normally represents the party or parties in power. It mainly focusses on framing up policies and laws. However, the political executive and the bureaucracy are two bases of a government. The public administration of any country runs with a coordinated and collaborative functioning of the political executive and the civil service. 

Transition

As the constant executive, the bureaucracy is entrusted with the responsibility of implementing the policies and laws in an effective manner. Though the civil servants in Nepal are often blamed for not being self-motivated towards fulfilling their responsibilities efficiently, they are the key to delivering services to the citizens. The bureaucracy in the country has been in a transitional phase even eight long years after the introduction of the federal constitution. The much-needed Federal Civil Service Act has yet to come into effect. In March this year, the government tabled the Federal Civil Service Bill in the parliament. The same Bill had also been registered in the parliament some five years before. But the then government had withdrawn it following rigorous discussions on it in the House committee.

Voices have been raised from different quarters, including civil servants and political parties, for getting the proposed Bill passed. Discussions on the Bill are underway in the State Affairs and Good Governance Committee. This is one of a few major Bills under consideration in parliament. The present coalition government is preparing to have the Bill endorsed without further delay considering its urgency.  Once the Bill gets a parliamentary nod, the Act will come into effect. The law is expected to be instrumental in the implementation of federalism. 

The 21st Civil Service Day was observed with a variety of programmes on Bhadra 22 (September 7). On the occasion, the federal government awarded 40 civil servants working in different positions, recognising their outstanding performance. Nepal has marked this day annually since 2004. The Civil Service Regulations, 1993 has a provision for presenting awards to the civil servants under three categories: the ‘best civil servant award’, the ‘excellence in civil service award’ and the ‘civil service award’. However, the government presented the ‘excellence in civil service award’ to 10 employees and the ‘civil service award’ to 30 civil servants amidst a special programme organised at the Singha Durbar. This sort of acknowledgement must have encouraged the government employees to perform better.

This year’s theme of the Civil Service Day was ‘Professional and Creative Administration: Development, Prosperity and Good Governance’. In line with the prevalent rule, the government has to declare an employee as the ‘best civil servant’ every year. Such an employee is to be awarded with a cash prize of Rs. 200,000. But the government has been unable to nominate the employees from among the civil servants for the past eight years in a row. One of the main reasons for this was that some of the employees having recognised under the category of the ‘best civil servant’ were questionable on moral grounds. Because of that, the government has not chosen any employee as the ‘best civil servant’. In order to inspire and motivate civil servants to maintain their moral integrity and become more result-oriented, the government must nominate the best civil servant and felicitate him/her every year. Unless any organisation has a provision of reward and punishment, it cannot function as anticipated.    

Even when many civil servants are competent, hardworking and honest, the bureaucracy does not have a good public image. This is mostly because of a few employees’ involvement in fiscal and policy-level corruption and other irregularities. They are supposed to carry out their responsibilities in a responsible, accountable, impartial, transparent and participatory manner. But most of them are found being involved in one form of corruption or the other. When they intend to misuse the authority entrusted with them and public resources for their private gains, the task of service delivery and development initiatives hardly become effective. The civil servants are often seen working hand in glove with the politicians, especially those elected people’s representatives at the federal, provincial and local levels. This has weakened the governance, causing growing frustrations among the people.  

 Though anti-corruption bodies like the Commission for Investigation of the Abuse of Authority (CIAA) are found catching some government employees red-handed while getting indulged in corruption, this scourge seems to have been deep-rooted in our society. So, efforts of anti-graft institutions alone may not be adequate to fight corruption. The political parties, civil society members and people must work towards cracking down on this social anomaly.  

Manipulation

It appears that unnecessary political interferences in the bureaucracy and thriving trade unionism have had a negative impact on the civil service system as a whole. As members of trade unions get blessings from the political parties they are affiliated with, they are found involved in fulfilling their personal and groups’ interests. They are so powerful that the office chief becomes helpless before them. They are flayed for their manipulation in transfer and promotion of their near and dear ones. They also look for their political protection. Keeping in aberration in mind, the role of trade unions must be limited in the new Federal Civil Service Act to be enacted. The proposed Federal Civil Service Bill must address all the contentious issues plaguing the civil service.    

Efforts must be made towards making public services more people-friendly, transparent and accountable. Instead of leaving the bureaucracy process-oriented, it must be developed as result-oriented. The bureaucratic system needs to be digitised so as to deliver services in a more efficient way and establish good governance in the country.  

(The author is a former deputy executive editor of this daily.)