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NEA to sign contracts to keep its senior officials on their toes
The Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) is mulling to sign performance contracts with its senior officials in a bid to enhance efficiency. The NEA board has approved a draft of the proposed pledge, and management plans to ask its senior staff to sign the pact promising to achieve certain targets.Bibek Subedi
The Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) is mulling to sign performance contracts with its senior officials in a bid to enhance efficiency. The NEA board has approved a draft of the proposed pledge, and management plans to ask its senior staff to sign the pact promising to achieve certain targets.
According to NEA Managing Director Kulman Ghising, all the senior staff are expected to sign performance contracts within a month. Ghising said the concept of performance contract was being introduced to institutionalize the reforms initiated at the state-owned power utility.
Eight deputy managing directors, eight regional directors, chiefs of different projects operated by the NEA and more than 100 distribution centre chiefs will have to sign performance contracts.
The contract contains different key performance indicators for different departments and positions. For example, the main target for distribution centre chiefs, as per Ghising, will be to control electricity leakage.
According to a recently published annual report of the authority, power leakage was recorded at 25.78 percent of the total supply.
“Leakage has gone down by 2 percentage points in the second quarter of this fiscal year, and the performance contract will ensure that the momentum is maintained throughout the year,” said Ghising. “They have to reduce leakage by curbing electricity theft and upgrading the distribution network.”
Likewise, management of inventory and quality of services are other areas which require improvement, and officials of the respective departments will have to sign contracts promising to attain specific targets.
Similarly, NEA project chiefs will have to stick to a pre-determined work schedule, and their performance will be measured by their ability to complete the assigned tasks on time. Officials who fail to meet the target mentioned in the performance contract will face stern action, including termination, according to Ghising.
Although signing performance contracts is a new thing for NEA officials, it is standard practice for the managing director. The NEA’s managing director has to sign a performance contract with the Energy Ministry.
Ghising himself has signed such an agreement, and if he fails to meet the targets stated in it, he could lose his job too. Ghising’s predecessor Mukesh Raj Kafle had to resign after he failed to meet the targets stated in the performance contract he signed with the ministry.
According to the performance contract signed between the ministry and Kafle, he had to score at least 50 percent during the annual evaluation. Kafle scored 45 and Minister Sharma asked him to step down. One of the major reasons behind Kafle’s failure to meet the target was his inability to pass on the goal to his subordinates.
Ghising, who is aware of what happened to the NEA’s previous chief, thought of introducing the performance contract plan to delegate responsibility to his subordinates so that he wouldn’t meet the same fate.