KATHMANDU: Local Development Secretary Shanta Bahadur Shrestha today questioned the integrity of Village Development Committee secretaries, who represent the government at the grassroot level.
Speaking at a press meet, he said they can no longer accept pay slips coming from these secretaries without a grain of suspicion.
Secretary Shrestha informed that secretary of Saptari district’s Bairawa VDC, Dev Narayan Shah, had furnished pay slips of Rs 1.47 lakh, the social security allowance meant for 49 widows aged below 60 years in January last year. Later, a team under Deputy Prime Minister Narayan Kaji Shrestha, which monitored the district on November 20-24, found that the widows, entitled to a monthly pay of Rs 500, had not received the sum.
Secretary Shrestha showed documents that 20 widows, including Jogida Khatun of Bairawa, Saptari, had furnished to show they did not receive any allowance last year.
The ministry today suspended Shah and three other VDC secretaries, three engineers and an overseer based in Saptari after finding their involvement in irregularities. It found that Dandha VDC secretary Narayan Yadav, Banainiya VDC secretary Dev Naryayan Yadav and Didhawa VDC secretary Baladev Yadav had misappropriated social security allowance and other funds in their VDCs, according to a press release.
Deputy spokesman for the ministry, Dhan Bahadur Shrestha, informed that an in-depth investigation into fake pay slips is on.
Engineers Laxmi Prasad Chaudhari, Tej Narayan Bajpeyi, Kishor Shah and sub-engineer Khursed Ikram, all based in Saptari, got suspended after the probe found their involvement in multiple cases of substandard road construction.
A similar monitoring in Dhanusha had led to suspension of 18 VDC secretaries and referral of their cases to the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority for a further probe. Secretary Shrestha said the team had sought an investigation in all 91 VDCs of Dhanusha anticipating rampant corruption there.
It is not a case of one or two districts, though.
During its monitoring, the team found that Kathmandu Metropolitan City and Kathmandu District Development Committee to have awarded tenders for parking lot management without public notice and renewed the contracts without adhering to KMC rules.
Deputy spokesman Shrestha cited the absence of elected local bodies as the major reason behind rampant corruption. Sabaikhabar.com
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