Public Expenditure Review Commission Report For Effective Bureaucracy

By K. P. Sharma

PUBLIC Expenditure Review Commission (PERC), formed a few months back to study and recommend the government regarding the size and nature of bureaucracy, has recently presented its report.

Interim Report

The commission’s first interim report has tried to address every aspect of the country’s bureaucratic sector and is going to get a complete picture of administration in its second interim report which could be completed within the current fiscal year. The government is expected to make some necessary changes in the bureaucracy in accordance with the recommendations of the commission.

The report presented to Finance Minister Mahesh Acharya by the convenor of the Commission, Binay Dhwoj Chand, has tried to visualise the physical structure of the administrative mechanism of the entire Kingdom and the nature and number of bureaucrats to make the mechanism function well. Some of the outstanding recommendations of the PERC report include decreasing the number of ministries, merging Special Police Department and the Public Revenue Investigation Department to form an independent investigative bureau to be headed by the head of government and scrapping district and regional offices which have overlapping functions.

Furthermore, the report suggests that the government should establish a single body at district level for running services of the same nature for which there may be separate ministries or departments at the centre.

This obviously hints at trimming down the size of bureaucracy into an attractively manageable form.

The government on the other hand has already initiated the task of trimming down the size of bureaucracy by offering "golden handshake" to the civil servants who have either reached 50 years of age or served for 20 years. Under the new provision any civil servant who meets the above-mentioned criteria can voluntarily retire from his/her job. According to the Ministry of General Administration, employees seeking voluntary retirement are flooding to the Ministry everyday.

With this, the size of bureaucracy is expected to come to a manageable level and that it would be efficient and result-oriented. Back in 1991, the government had formed "Civil Service Improvement and Recommendation Commission" under the convenorship of Kulshekhar Sharma. The Commission had recommended the government to trim down the size of bureaucracy, bring down the number of ministries, scrap the departments and offices which are of no use at all and facilitate the civil employees so as to motivate them and make them more efficient.

Experts say that one third of the existing civil servants is enough to look after the administrative and other works of the government. Presently, there are more than one hundred thousand civil employees, excluding those of corporations and other semi-government institutions and more than 10 per cent of the total annual budget has to be set aside for them.

On the other hand, the , Public Service Commission, the country’s only constitutional body authorised to screen bureaucrats and provide manpower to the government, is revising the curriculum and its examination system at a war footing so that it could select
better human resources. If the civil servants are analytical, creative and are well motivated towards their duties, even a small number of people will be sufficient to man the entire administration of the nation.

Meanwhile, the government has yet to treat all the employees on an equal footing regarding their salaries and other facilities.

The employees at the Cottage and Small Scale Industry Development Committee have not yet received their increased salary even after the government declared the increment of pay scale some four months back. Nepal Television, the only national television of the country, has also behaved partially with its temporary employees stating that the office lacks the amount to provide them with the facility. Tribhuvan University, country’s largest and the oldest university, is still working out to fix the rate of payment for the teachers appointed on a daily wage basis.

The teachers working in the outlying parts of the Kingdom have almost the same plight. After the government in its budget announced to scrap the bonus system, the teachers who had been receiving 100 per cent remote allowance have been deprived of the facility. At present they have been receiving less than what they used to get previously.

Although the government has despatched circulars to arrange the salary amounts in such a way that would not be less than that of the previous years’, it seems all the offices have not been following the directives.

Employees at Nepal Television and Tribhuvan University say that it was a partiality. They say they feel humiliated while receiving the salary though they work for equal hours and with equal pressures as their permanent counterparts do.

Future Plan

Indeed, the government cannot expect much from the employees who are not treated equally in terms of perks and payments. In such a confusing atmosphere, the government needs to seriously mull over its further plans and policies. By doing so, it would not only ensure the smooth functioning of bureaucracy which is most essential for democratic consolidation and all round development of the country, but also be beyond any charges and criticisms.

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