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Kathmandu, March 8

The government is all set to grossly misuse billions of rupees of loan obtained from the World Bank, as it is gearing up to hire ‘unnecessary’ staff to support the controversial Prime Minister Employment Programme.

The WB has offered a credit line of $120 million to the government to implement Youth Employment Transformation Initiative, which aims to raise access of Nepali youths to employment opportunities. At least 15 per cent of this loan amount, or $18 million (approximately Rs 2.12 billion), will go towards hiring two employees in each of the 753 local levels, including to support the PMEP, which guarantees 100 days of job for the unemployed.

The PMEP, introduced last fiscal, was dragged into controversy after the government started distributing cash to cadres of the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP) on the pretext of creating jobs for the unemployed. Most of the beneficiaries of this programme were employed people, according to government officials. Despite being aware of this, the government spent Rs 2.37 billion of taxpayers’ money on this programme last fiscal.

This year the government is preparing to spend even more. It has allocated a budget of Rs two billion to be distributed among the ‘unemployed’ as wages. It is seeking a loan of Rs 2.2 billion from the WB this fiscal.

A part of this fund will be used to hire an officer level staff (a sub-engineer) and an assistant in each local level. These employees, according to government officials, will primarily maintain data of job seekers and job-related opportunities and coordinate skills training programmes to implement the PMEP. If these staff members are hired, 753 local governments will have additional 1,506 employees in their payroll. This will create financial burden of hundreds of millions of rupees each year, which will ultimately have to be borne by taxpayers, as the debt obtained from the WB will ultimately have to be serviced by the public.

“The government should not have decided to hire two employees in each local level at the moment. It will create unnecessary financial liability. Instead, the government should have launched pilot programmes in selected local levels where demand for and supply of labourers are high and gradually hired more staff at other local levels on the basis of the pilot programme’s suc

Read the full story on The Himalayan Times

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