July 18, Kathmandu. In the last fiscal year 2077/78, the Prime Minister's Employment Program has failed to create employment as per the target. The program, which provides employment to 200,000 people a year, has provided employment to only 161,582 people for a few days.
According to the preliminary data available on the website of the Prime Minister's Employment Program, 1,161,882 people got employment last year. Last year, the government allocated Rs 11.60 billion for the program, but the target was to spend Rs 10.34 billion on job creation.
9.54 billion had already gone to the local level account. However, the local level has spent Rs. 4.91 billion in the entire fiscal year.
The budget of the program was spent at the end of the fiscal year. The implementation of the road-focused employment program was intensified when roads were blocked everywhere due to rains.
Till mid-April last year, only around Rs 400 million was spent at the local level. However, an additional Rs 4.5 billion has been spent on seniority alone.
According to the data available on the website of the Prime Minister's Employment Program, the expenditure of the program, which was Rs 392.3 million as of April 10, has reached Rs 4.91 billion.
Although the implementation of the program was said to have been affected due to the tightening of the ban, the expenditure of the program had started increasing at a qualitative rate since last June.
The Prime Minister's Employment Program, which was introduced by the government as a major job creation program, was weak even in the first 10 months of the current fiscal year. Even in the first nine months of the current Fiscal Year, out of the budget of Rs. 11.60 billion, only Rs. 293.4 million (2.53 percent) was spent. The program, which barely spent Rs 110 million in April, seems to have paid tens of millions of rupees daily in the last days of the fiscal year.
According to the Prime Minister's Employment Program, 16,068 projects are being implemented at 742 local levels so far this year. 10 local levels have not mobilized the budget of the program.
The Prime Minister's Employment Program had set a target of providing 100 days of employment to 200,000 registered poor this year. There are 753,156 registered unemployed under the program.
The Ministry of Labor, Employment, and Social Security has been sending conditional grants to the local level for the program. Budgets are accounted for by local bodies in the name of employment programs.
Some local levels have been spending such grants more on small infrastructure projects in a distribution-oriented manner. The workers have not been able to reap adequate benefits from it, nor has the money been put to good use.
The budget of the employment program has been spent on cleaning roads, weeds, clearing roads, cleaning local courtyards, and other works. However, the government has been criticized for spending a large budget on work that can be done through public labor.
Last year, local governments sent a list of proposed projects to the Ministry of Labor. The federal government has not manipulated the projects sent by the local level. Permission has been granted to those on the unemployed list to get jobs in the projects selected by the local level.
Most of the locals had proposed to spend for the project including road and culvert maintenance. Out of 16 thousand 68 projects operated last year, 7 thousand 584 projects are related to road transport. 3.5 billion has been spent on road projects alone. The number of various small community infrastructure projects is 2,953. It is seen that Rs 1.27 billion has been spent on such projects.
