Take the lead, PM Oli

Rather than blame bureaucrats for government’s sub-par performance, he can show the way.

Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli was in a mood to give an earful to the over 50 government secretaries he had assembled at the staff college in Jawalakhel. Oli had decided to directly talk to the secretaries, the top functionaries in the bureaucracy, after the ministers in the federal Cabinet repeatedly complained of their difficulties in working with ‘uncooperative staff’. The staff at the ministries are apparently not delivering expected results. Talking to the top bureaucrats on Friday, Prime Minister Oli urged them not to shun their responsibilities by making excuses. One of the big complaints of the secretaries was that the bureaucracy was demoralised. If a flaw was found in the work they handled, the officials would have to shoulder all the blame. For instance, in nearly every big corruption case in Nepal, while most top political leaders who gave the final decisions were left off the hook, the officials lower down were prosecuted and jailed. Why this double standard, the secretaries asked? They also pointed to the frequent transfer of civil servants as another big hurdle to efficient service-delivery.