People of Jagannath Rural Municipality in Bajura have been forced to travel to the district headquarters to register life events and to get recommendation letters for passports and citizenships due to lack of ward secretaries.  

As the federal government has failed to fill the vacancies of ward secretary at most of the local levels, people have been deprived of essential services at their villages.  

“There is just a single staff who can work as ward secretary in our rural municipality and he is providing necessary services from the headquarters itself,” said Kali Bahadur Shahi, chairman of the rural municipality.

“Despite our repeated requests for wards secretaries to the federal government, our demand has not been fulfilled yet,” he added.

As per the Local Level Operation Act 2017, wards are authorised to issue recommendation letters for citizenships, passports and various other essential services; register life events, such as birth, death and marriage; and recommend free of cost treatment to the poor, among others.

According to local government officials, these works have been affected without ward secretaries.

This problem is not limited to Jagannath Rural Municipality or Bajura district. More than half of the wards in local units across the country are without ward secretaries, according to the Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration.

Shortage of staff has also  added burden to those local units that have just one or two ward secretaries. Adanchuli Rural Municipality in remote Humla district is a case in point.

According to Dal Federa, chairman of this rural municipality, there are just two ward secretaries for six wards.

“The two secretaries are performing the jobs of six secretaries,” he said.

In some places, local units have mobilised lower ranked staff to work as ward secretaries.

“There are 6,743 wards  across the country, but only 3,000 ward secretaries have been mobilised so far,” said the ministry’s spokesperson, Suresh Adhikari.

Although the government has prioritised mobilising the government staff at the local levels, it has failed to dispatch adequate number of employees.

One must be a non-gazetted first class officer (Nayab Subba) at least to become a ward secretary.  Half of the Nayab Subbas in the country work under various ministries and their line agencies at the centre.

“Those who are working at the offices under federal government don’t want to go work as ward secretaries

outside the Capital. The offices also don’t want to lose them because they fell that  their performance could be undermined if their experienced staff were to leave,” said Adhikari.

According to the ministry, there are around 11,000 Nayab Subbas,  which is not enough to fill the vacancies of ward secretaries across the country.

“Without fresh recruitment drive, ward secretary vacancies across the country cannot be filled,” said Adhikari.

 For recruitment,  Province Civil Service Act should be formulated based on Federal Civil Service Act. None of these tasks have been accomplished yet.

“There is still a long way to go for the local units to get their ward secretaries,” Adhikari added.