Kathmandu, Oct 3, Nepal Administrative Staff College has established and operated the Federalism Study Centre. The Centre has been established out of the realization of the need of a specialized institution to carry out study, research and capacity enhancement in various aspects of the federal governance system by increasing the capacity of the public administration and the governments of various levels as per the changed structure.
It is stated the Centre has the objective of working as the resource centre for conducting study and research on various aspects of federal implementation, for increasing the capacity of the employees and people’s representatives, for analyzing the international practices and bringing the learning for Nepal, for organizing workshop and conferences and for documenting and preserving documents and papers related to federalism.
The Constitution of Nepal has allocated the works and responsibilities of the federal, province and local levels specifying their specific rights and works and the concurrent rights. This allocation of work is the basis of the country’s federal governance system. However, experts are of the view that problems are starting to arise in the spirit of the federalism due to the lack of uniformity between the constitution’s vision and the works.
National Assembly Chair Ganesh Prasad Timilsina, speaking in a discussions programme on the various aspects of the future course of action of the Centre and federalism implementation, urged all the supporters of the federalism to become proactive for protecting the federal system in the context of various unnecessary comments on the concept of federalism itself due to the lack of uniformity on the implementation of federalism.
“The alternatives brought forward by the federal system have been in shadow due to the thinking that the work role and rights of political and administrative level should be kept under their responsibility,” he said. Former Minister and leader Rekha Sharma stressed on the need of strengthening the division of works among the three levels of government rather than one accusing the other.
Chair of the National Natural Resource and Fiscal Commission, Balananda Poudel said the Staff College has been active from the bginning in terms of implementation of the constitution and the federalism. He assured of the Commission’s cooperation to the specialized centre on various aspects. Federalism expert Dr Pitambar Sharma called for making the relations among the federal, provincial and local governments stronger as per the constitution’s spirit and provisions.
He also stressed on improving the performance level of the public administration. Constitution expert Bipin Adhikari suggested moving forward by coordinating all the issues of the provinces as per the spirit of the federalism.
Joint Secretary at the Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration, Baburam Shrestha, secretary at the Federal Parliament Secretariat, Dr Bharat Raj Gautam and Bishnu Adhikari of The Asia Foundation, a development partner organisation, federalism expert Dr Khim Lal Devkota, Nepal Administrative Staff College’s executive director Punya Prasad Neupane, among other speakers expressed their conviction that the Centre would play an important role towards taking the country ahead on the path of prosperity by consolidating the federalism.
