A day after Inter-State Council meeting, where the chief ministers of seven provinces complained about the lack of government employees, the federal government swung into action on Tuesday, taking steps to adjust employees for provincial and local levels.

The Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration on Tuesday instructed the chief administrative officers at local units to give a letter of adjustment to the locally recruited staff within 10 days. Around 21,000 staff have been recruited locally, according to the ministry.

In a press statement on Tuesday, the ministry has said the federal government will fill the vacant positions at the provincial and local levels by adjusting the current pool of staff.

The ministry has also asked the government offices to update the details of the civil servants on their staff, while also calling on the civil servants to update their personal details at the Department of Civil Personnel Records within 15 days.

The ministry has also stopped transferring its staffers until the adjustment process completes, the statement reads.

As the civil servants have to submit applications for adjustment from the office they have been assigned, the ministry has asked them to report to the agencies concerned by December 14 and notify the ministry or agency concerned and the Department of Civil Personnel Records.

The government’s move comes after it published the Civil Servant Adjustment Ordinance in the Nepal Gazette on Sunday, formally starting the implementation of the ordinance.

Kedar Bahadur Paneru, joint secretary at the Federal Affairs Ministry, told the Post on Tuesday that they had started sending a notice to the government offices and employees regarding the adjustment.

“We will soon issue another notice in the name of employees to submit applications for adjustment in their desired offices,” Paneru said.

The ministry is currently developing a software through which the employees could apply for adjustment. “The software is almost ready and we are putting it through a technical test,” he said, adding that the government was planning to conclude the adjustment process within mid-January.

The government is also updating the total seats required at the federal, provincial and local levels. According to the recent Organization and Management Survey, the government has fixed 46,000 employees under the federal government, 21,000 under the provincial governments and 57,000 under the local units.

As the total number of civil servants currently stands at around 89,000, more employees will be required to fill the vacant seats in all three tiers of the government, said Paneru.