Minister Sharma: Legal basis needs for monitoring, evaluating for development

Kathmandu: Minister for Communications and Information Technology Rekha Sharma has said that a legal basis is needed for monitoring and evaluating the development, and construction projects operated in the country.

Minister Sharma participated in a discussion meeting on the principles of the Monitoring and Evaluation Bill, 2076 BS with the State Affairs and Good Governance Committee, the House of Representatives (HoR) on Sunday. Minister Sharma said the bill has been brought to provide the legal basis for the monitoring and evaluation conducted by the Prime Minister's Office, the National Planning Commission, and the related government ministries.

The bill originated in the National Assembly was amended by the upper house thematic committee and later passed by the Assembly including a report sent to the House of Representatives, the lower house of the Federal Parliament. The HoR forwarded the bill to the Committee for further enriching the document.

The bill has been brought in the context of a lack of clear legal provisions as to which of the three tiers of the government carries out the monitoring and evaluation of which development projects with the formation of the three layers of government of late.

Likewise, Minister Sharma argued that the bill was brought as it had become necessary to put in place a specific legal system in the context of the local, provincial, and federal governments also running and monitoring the development projects. At present, the National Development Council chaired by the Prime Minister and the minister-level development council, and the provincial and local levels have been carrying out the monitoring in their way.

This is the current practice. The proposed bill has incorporated a provision allowing for a third party to conduct the monitoring and evaluation. Some new mechanisms have also been proposed for the monitoring and evaluation. She even stated that the bill should incorporate topics like the modality, the kind of policy provisions, and the structural system for the monitoring and evaluation of projects to be operated by all the three tiers of the government and was necessary to include the issues in the bill how to give legal recognition and legitimacy to make monitoring effective mentioning regular monitoring and evaluation of the projects are the importance and specialty of the bill.

With the passage of the bill, policy-level arrangement and criteria related to monitoring as well as the basis for monitoring and evaluation of development projects would be determined. The members also expressed their views that projects could not be completed within the deadline as per the agreement due to corruption and anomalies in infrastructure constriction.

As Pradeep Poudel, who amended the bill, said there was no alternative to bring the guilty under the ambit of law to end the trend of not completing the national pride projects on time. He said, 'There will be a big challenge in the development of the country if the problem of not completing the development projects within the deadline will not be addressed on time. State structured and contractors should be made accountable for making alternative mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation.'

Committee members were Raghuji Panta, Dilendra Prasad Badu, and Hemraj Rai, who expressed their views on the occasion.

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