The day-to-day business of Krishnanagar municipality in Kapilvastu district has been stalled for over three months in absence of the chief administrative officer.
Since municipality’s former chief administrative officer, Damodar Bhandari, was transferred to Tinau rural municipality in Palpa district in December, 2019, the municipality has been devoid of chief administrative officer. As a result, the development works in the municipality have been stagnant.
Municipality’s mayor Rajat Pratap Shah and deputy- mayor Sabnam Khatun said that they repeatedly prodded the concerned Ministry to deploy the officer in the vacant place. Mayor Shah shared that they came to Kathmandu for five times seeking positive intervention from the Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration to their crisis but to no avail.
Shah informed that they held meetings with then line Minister Lal Babu Pandit and present Minister Hridayesh Tripathi repeatedly and brought the situation to their knowledge yet no action has been made by the Ministry towards this end.
Deputy-mayor Khatun expressed her sorrow over the inaction of the concerned ministry in spite of submitting memorandum to the Ministry twice through the District Administration Office. She blamed that the Ministry itself was the obstruction for the development of Krishnanagar as in absence of the officer, administrative works here have come to a standstill.
Moreover, the municipality employees have not been paid their salaries. The teachers in the community schools in this local unit have started their protest as they were also bereft of salaries for nearly 5 months. The teachers of 27 community schools and 22 religious schools have begun demonstrating in phase-wise manner. They will stage a two-hour of sit-in in front of the Municipality.
National Teachers’ Association’s Town Chairperson Prahlad Prasad Pandey warned that if there was no resolution to the release of budget from the concerned Ministry, they would shut-down all the community schools in the town and will take to street if their voices were unheeded.
Teacher Pradeep Singh said that the budget allocated for remuneration for teachers, school staffers, physical infrastructure and scholarship among others was not released in absence of the administration chief in the municipality.
The local health posts in his local unit are also running low on medicines. If the administration chief is not appointed here timely, it is likely to adversely impact the locals for the local health posts will run short of medicines.
