Parliament committee passes Federal Civil Service Bill

KATHMANDU, June 29 : The House of Representatives, State Affairs and Good Governance Committee has passed the Bill Designed to Provide for Formation, Operation and Conditions of Service along with the provision of age limit of 60 years in the civil service.

The bill containing various new provisions were declared passed by the committee despite the differences of some ruling party lawmakers. The bill has proposed the age limit of an employee retiring in 2022 at 59 years and the age limit of those retiring after that at 60 years.

Similarly, the bill proposes to change the existing provision of 55 per cent from open category and 45 per cent from reservation quota in the examinations for joining the civil service to 51 per cent and 49 per cent respectively. The bill has also made provisions for reservation in the Khas-Arya, Muslim and Tharu by keeping them in their own groups. It proposes to assign the Province Chief Secretary from the federal civil service. However, the Province Secretary and Administrative Officer of the local levels would be assigned from the Province Civil Service itself.

The committee has rejected the government’s proposal of assigning the Province Chief Secretary, the Province Secretary and the Executive of the local level from the federal civil service. The government had wanted to assign employees from the federal civil service itself to these posts arguing that it was necessary to maintain control, balance and coordination at the federal, province and local levels.

Committee president Sashi Shrestha had put the bill for a decision after the committee members put their views on the report prepared by the committee’s secretariat.
Pampha Bhusal, Yasoda Subedi, Janardan Sharma and Maheshwor Jung Gahatraj among the lawmakers seconded the entire report whereas other members expressed their differences to some points and provisions of the report.

The bill also proposes performance agreement of the employees and makes a provision of deducting salary equivalent to 10 days if the employees delays work and gives trouble to the service recipient.

Similarly, the bill has made provision by which employee cannot be appointed in wage basis in regular works except in expertise service. It has also made provision in which 10 per cent seats out of the total posts for which applications have been called for the post of Under Secretary and Joint Secretary as the open competition percentage while in the case of Non-Gazetted Second Class Officer and Section Officer, no seats have been determined for the internal competition.

Speaking in the meeting before this, Minister for Federal Affairs and General Administration Hridayesh Tripathi argued that the committee should listen the government’s opinion on topics regarding the Province Chief Secretary, Secretary and the Administrative Officer of the Local Level.
He said the Ministry did not know about the report said to have been agreed upon. “The committee should listen to the government’s views on topics as civil service employees who have opted for employees’ adjustment, the trade unions and Province Secretary, among others. Nevertheless, the government considers parliamentary supremacy as the supreme and respects it. If the bill is moved ahead without agreement it will merely be confined to intellectual pleasure,” the Minister said.

The committee members stressed that the government should accept the committee’s decision as the bill is the parliament’s property although it was introduced by the government.RSS