The project, established with the aim of expanding irrigation infrastructure, controlling rivers, and strengthening water resource management, has faced administrative and policy obstacles in its initial stages.
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The Irrigation and Water Resources Management Project Office, established in Shrawan of the current fiscal year, has not been able to operate due to lack of budget.
The office of this project, which is under the Ministry of Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation of the federal government, was established in Kirtipur, Dadeldhura last Shrawan. Its work has not been able to proceed due to lack of budget.
The project, which was established with the aim of expanding irrigation infrastructure, strengthening river control and water resource management, has faced administrative and policy obstacles in its initial stages.
According to project chief Arun Kumar Shah, 355.2 million rupees were allocated for the office as current and capital funds with the start of the fiscal year. It was planned to operate five major programs under the budget.
However, he said that the project could not move forward effectively due to the budget being stopped in the initial stage of plan implementation. ‘The budget was allocated at the beginning of the fiscal year.’ Since it is a new project, we were initially studying the tender process,' said Shah. 'After the Genji movement, various instructions were given by the Ministry, ranging from broken plans to plans without a detailed project report (DPR), and currently all the budgets have been blocked.'
According to him, the implementation process of the project has been affected due to the blocking of the budget. Especially in the initial phase of the newly established office, the work such as technical preparation, contract process and plan selection has been stopped, and the overall progress has come to a standstill.
Although the ministry has partially released the budget in the recent past, the project office says that it is not enough. According to Shah, only about 80 million rupees have been released, based on which efforts are being made to move some plans forward. 'The estimates of the released plans have been prepared and the tender process has been moved forward. Now, some plans have reached the stage of agreement, work can be accelerated as soon as the budget is released,' he said.
But as a large part of the budget is still withheld, the overall progress of the project has not been satisfactory. The project has stated that the capital expenditure has been zero so far, while the current expenditure is only about 25 percent. This project has been brought into operation to cover not only Dadeldhura but also four districts of the Far West.
The project has been given the responsibility of managing and monitoring the federal irrigation schemes in Dadeldhura, Doti, Bajura and Achham.
In addition, river control and management works on the West Seti River, Budhiganga River and Thuligad River will also fall under this project. But due to lack of budget, there is a risk that these ambitious plans will be limited to paper.
There is a concern that the risk of possible floods and erosion during the rainy season may increase further if the river control works are delayed. Similarly, delays in irrigation infrastructure development have been seen to have a direct impact on agriculture and, in the long term, have a negative impact on agricultural production, disaster risk reduction, and local economic development.
