The Himalayan Times
7
March 2014
Urgency of local polls
It has been almost 12 years for the local
level bodies being without the elected representatives due to gross negligence
of the so called big parties who never got tired of talking about democracy and
claiming themselves as its champions. Different mechanisms were tried to
implement the development activities at the local level. They were not successful;
instead most of the development funds were misappropriated. Representatives of the
all party mechanism to implement the development activities were also involved
in corruption. Recently, the CIAA announced that most of the local level
development funds were misappropriated in the absence of elected local bodies.
Assigning a VDC Secretary to look after the
daily affairs of two to three VDC was one of the blunders made by the Ministry
of Local Development (MoLD). Millions of development budget were haphazardly
spent due to the absence of proper supervision and monitoring mechanism. Had
there been elected bodies, all these irregularities could have been minimized if
not avoided. Ultimately, the local population were badly affected and deprived
from receiving the much needed services at their door steps. Knowing the
government promise to hold the local level election within six months, there
seems hope for the people to elect their representatives to run the local
bodies smoothly in the coming days.
However, the parties, those which were
siphoning the local level development funds to fulfil their vested interests,
continue to pile pressure on this government to allocate necessary budgets as
reported in “Parties eying development funds” (THT, 5 Mar, Page 3). It is hoped
that this government will announce the date for holding the local level
election soon and accordingly put the long elected representatives in charge of
running the local bodies.
Rai Biren Bangdel
Maharajgunj, Kathmandu.
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