PALPA: Citizen Charter is a tool to provide information to the service recipients about the services to be delivered by the service providers. It is considered a crucial social accountability tool to promote transparency and maintain good governance.

Nevertheless, Rampur municipality in Palpa district has not set up the citizen charter at its office.

Though it is legally binding for the public service providing agencies to put in place citizen charter at their offices to inform the service-seekers about their services, it is conspicuously lacking at the Rampur municipality office.

Bhojraj Bhatatrai, a local of Rampur, said the citizen charter containing information about service availability and delivery points at the municipality was not found set up anywhere.

“Citizens and service seekers have been deprived of accessing information in lack of citizen charter at the municipality office,” he said, adding that those aware people can access information through different sources such as in-person contact and website but the general public are bearing the brunt of the missing of citizen charter in the system.

According to the Good Governance (Management and Operation) Act, 2007 provisions, each service providing agency should put up the citizen charter at the office premises so that service seekers can easily notice the information.

However, Rampur municipality has failed to comply with the legal arrangement for placing the citizen charter, said Maniraj Adhikari, a teacher of Sitaram secondary school. It is the fundamental right of the citizens to receive information.

Gyan Bahadur Darji, a teacher of Kalika secondary school, said citizens would not be deprived of basic information of the services if social accountability tools such as citizen charter were put in place.

Chief Administrative Officer of Rampur municipality Lekhnath Neupane said the citizen charter is under the process of digitization and it would be put in place once the digitized form was ready.