Kathmandu, September 10
The government is preparing to provide cars to local bodies. The Ministry of General Administration says it has started consulting stakeholder on the guidelines to provide vehicles to local bodies.
According to the ministry, the brand, make and number of vehicles allotted to each local body will be different based on the geography and the population of the area. This comes as a handful of local representatives were reported in the press to have used budge provided to them by the central government for development works to buy luxurious cars for themselves.
Rudra Singh Tamang, spokesperson for the Ministry of Local Development, said the ministry did not have budget to buy cars for local representatives and it will have to rely on its own resources to procure the cars. “Not all local representatives will get cars,” he added.
According to Tamang, the first priority will be given to cars that are not being used in the districts. The other avenue the government is looking at is to handover cars of projects being run at the local levels to the representatives. Discussions are also underway to provide cars used by local hydro projects to the people’s representatives. If all these options are not available, the ministry will approach donor agencies to finance the cars.
