While offices under the federal and provincial governments in Baglung have spent a total of 41 percent of their budget in 11 months, most of the plans remain incomplete.
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The development offices under the federal and provincial governments in the district have spent only 41 percent of the development budget as the 11 months of the fiscal year are coming to an end. These offices claim that this number will reach 55 to 60 percent in the remaining month.
Development work has been affected due to lack of budget spending. Locals are affected as even the plans that were based on need have not been completed on time. Road, drinking water, irrigation and other infrastructure projects have also been left behind due to lack of payment. Some contractors have stopped work due to lack of payment from the federal and provincial governments.
The federal offices have spent 644.9 million out of the total development budget of 1.54 billion 900 million by the last week of Jestha. This is 41.85 percent. Only 644.7 million has been spent on the budget of 1.55 billion 460 million from the provincial side. This is also 41.47 percent.
Kishore Kumar Shrestha, Chief of the Treasury and Accounts Control Office, said that the working style and process of the Development Office are slow. ‘This problem has arisen due to not awarding contracts and starting work on time,’ he said. ‘Without development expenditure, the ceiling of the federal and provincial budgets for the coming year will also be reduced.’ He said that in some schemes, little expenditure has been seen due to non-payment even after work has been done.
Only 30 million 96 million has been spent so far out of the 849.5 million budget of the district-based Infrastructure Development Office for the current year. 37 million 86 million has been spent out of the 725.6 million budget of the Road Division Office. This is 51 percent. Only 33 million 33 million has been spent out of the 166.8 million budget of the Irrigation Development Division Office till Jestha. This is only 20 percent. 25 million 78 million has been spent out of the 339.4 million budget of the Drinking Water and Sanitation Division Office. Only Rs 166,000 out of Rs 44.5 million of the new city has been spent. This is not even one percent.
According to Gopichandra Acharya, an engineer at the Intensive Urban and Building Construction Project Office, there has been no budget expenditure for the new city project in Burtiwang this year. ‘Notices were only published for some works, and even the budget was withheld after the Genji movement,’ Acharya said. ‘It was released in Baisakh, and now there is no way to work.’
He said that contractors have refused to work by citing the price hike of bitumen and other materials. This situation occurs in the development budget expenditure every year due to the tendency to not start work on time under various pretexts, says Surdashan Silwal, associate professor of economics and campus head of Dhaulagiri Multiple Campus. ‘We have a habit of waiting for the budget to be released, saying that the budget in the red book is ours, so the projects are stalled because we cannot work on time,’ he said.
Usually, there is a tendency to not even start the contract by Asoj/Kartik, saying that the amount has not been released, and to start work only after Dashain-Tihar. Office heads say that the start of work has been delayed this year due to the election code of conduct. ‘It was not only because we wanted it, the election also affected this year,’ said Hari Prasad Sharma, head of the Road Division Office, Baglung. ‘After the Genji movement at the beginning of the year, it was not certain whether the budget would come or not.’ He said that there was confusion in the work as some of the budgets were also withdrawn.
Technicians say that contractors have not worked on large projects due to budget payment problems. He said that there was confusion about work for a long time after the Genji movement, and that the code of conduct in the elections and the increase in the price of petroleum products had affected the work.
