Abstract:
In the context of the new vision of local government institutions, the government plans to entrust
the municipalities and city corporations with enhanced development role in their respective areas
of jurisdiction. The government is encouraging and empowering the municipalities and
corporations to undertake increasingly more development programmes/projects for catering to
the needs of the citizen. As part of that intend, huge development works have been implementing
through government allocation, different development partners assistance and ULB’s own
resources. In case of development partners assisted project, Local government Engineering
Department (LGED) has play vital role to eliminate possibility of “mis-procurement” irrespective
of goods, works and services. In contrast, all Municipalities have experience with low value
procurement and evaluations from their local budget or from national funds for goods and civil
works and have no experience in service procurement. From this study, the weakness of the
procurement function of municipalities in the area of i) Organizational and Staff Capacity, ii)
Information Management, iii) Procurement Practices, iv) Effectiveness and v) Accountability
Measures came to the surface through the interviews of the personnel of engineering section who
are responsible for all sorts of procurement. Inadequate human resource, lack of proper training
and logistics are the causes identified through this study. Another challenging part of municipality
capacity is the “random” transfer of staffs. However, a further rigorous evaluation is needed prior
to take any initiatives to enhance the capacity of municipalities.
