The National Council questioned the Home and Cultural Affairs Minister of the government’s plan in ensuring adequate staff for local governments in the 12th five-year plan.
The house also asked the government about their plan of completion of capacity building of Local Governments (LG). This particular recommendation is being proposed after huge resources were allocated and responsibilities assigned to LGs in the 12th FYP.
During the 22nd session of the National Council, the House recommended the government to strengthen the capacity of the LG functionaries and deploy adequate human resources to the LGs as per the LG Act. The government responded in written stating “Decentralization Policy, which is being formulated, will look into addressing this concern”.
With a huge allocation of fund for the local government, the questions were also asked following complaints against the local government due to lack of knowledge about few procedures and human resources.
As per the statistics shared by the house, today there are only 153 accountants and 177 engineers assigned for 205 gewogs in the country. Of which, more than 90% of the accountants and engineers are either attached with Dzongkhag Administrations or Dungkhag Administrations leading to the shortage of manpower in the gewogs. Lack of adequate manpower at the gewog and Dungkhag level hampers the progress of the developments works and also makes service delivery difficult.
To this the minister said, they are already working on it.
“As per the Acts, we are requesting to deploy administrative officer, engineers and accountants to each gewogs. We have been talking with the dzongkhag that if possible we will send for each gewog although we are equally concerned with the facilities,” Dasho Sherub Gyeltshen, Minister for MoHCA, informed the House.
He added that the completion of capacity building for the local government is an uninterrupted process.
“There are one thousand four hundred ninety nine LG members. These gups are being elected every five years. So an employee working under that gup either goes for a transfer or resigns. The training for the new employee is a continuous process. Likewise, the employee for LG under our ministry is always being trained. For example, the 205 gups are trained for leadership development and LG development,” the minister added.
He added that the government’s plan to allocate huge resources was intended to bring back people and youth in their villages following the development.
