Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and most ministers in his Cabinet have been found to be performing poorly, according to a report by the Result Management Division (RMD) under the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers (OPMCM).
Unveiling the progress report on the first six months of fiscal year 2081-82 BS, the RMD has pointed out that the prime minister’s office and most ministries did not complete their tasks on time as pledged.
The current government was formed on July 14 under the leadership of CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli. There are 22 ministers and three ministers of state from Nepali Congress, UML, Janata Samajwadi Party, Loktantrik Samajwadi Party, and Nagarik Unmukti Party in the government.
On September 12 last year, Prime Minister Oli signed performance contracts with the ministers to complete their ministries’ annual plans and programs mentioned in the government’s policies and programs and budget within the stipulated time, cost, and quality.
However, it was found that the prime minister and ministers did not carry out time-bound work according to the policies and programs, budget, and performance contracts.
The RMD has published the half-yearly report evaluating 1,010 activities and 1,961 milestones of 28 ministries and government bodies, including all ministries, the National Planning Commission, Office of the Investment Board Nepal, National Vigilance Center, Public Procurement Monitoring Office, National Statistics Office, and the Office of the Nepal Trust.
A total of 344 work plans of all ministries and government bodies were entered into an integrated online monitoring system. The work plans were divided into milestones and activities for monitoring and evaluation.
The Ministry of Law was the best performer on the milestones and activities to be completed within the month of Paush (mid-January). The ministry, headed by Ajay Kumar Chaurasiya of Nepali Congress, did 100 percent work completing 11 milestones and one activity.
Meanwhile, the OPMCM did only 28.1 percent work as it did not complete 44 milestones and 23 activities within the stipulated time. This has dented the government's preparation to achieve targets based on results.
This is also being talked about as the prime minister having failed in the performance evaluation. There were speculations in the past that ministers used to be reshuffled pointing at their weak performance in the performance evaluation. This time, the performance of 12 ministries, including the OPMCM, was found to have been poor.
The current government was formed on the basis of a seven-point agreement reached between the two largest parties of the federal Parliament, Nepali Congress and CPN-UML, on July 1 last year.
The report by the RMD has shown the six-month performance of the government to be disappointing.
The Ministry of Finance had the most work to do on milestones in the first six months of the current fiscal year. UML Vice-chairman Bishnu Paudel is the finance minister. The ministry completed only 49.2 percent of its milestones and 29.2 percent of its activities.
On average, the ministry completed 39.2 percent of its tasks.
The Ministry of Physical Infrastructure had the poorest performance among the ministries. Headed by Devendra Dahal of CPN-UML, the ministry did only 7.9 percent of its tasks as it could not complete its 19 milestones and two activities on time.
The urban, youth, drinking water, women, land, and agriculture ministries also performed poorly, with their work progress hovering only around 30 percent on average.
