9 July, Kathmandu : Minister for Information and Communications Dr Bikram Timilsina has directed the officials of the ministry and line agencies not to recruit contract staff by going against the existing laws. The contract staff should be hired only by complying with the legal processes, justifying the relevance and identifying needs, which should be to ensure law-based, transparent and systematic human resources management, Minister Dr Timilsina said.
Illegal recruitment of a large number of contract employees by the line agencies has now created issues in the management of the institutions, Minister Dr Timilsina said while asking the line agencies under the ministry to hire contract staff only when there is a dire need to carry out their daily operations. Minister Dr Timilsina added that such recruitment should be made only on a competitive basis by remaining within the legal framework established by existing laws, concerned institutions’ Acts and the Employees’ Service Terms and Regulations.
Minister Dr Timilsina argued that institutional governance remained weak and the economic burden remained high in some of the state-owned media houses in the past, following recruitment on the basis of political backing. The minister said that such practice will be totally scrapped. Following the directive of the ministry, Gorkhapatra Corporation, Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) and Rastriya Samachar Samiti (RSS) have already initiated their human resource management as per their Acts and the Employees’ Service Terms and Regulations.
On the occasion, RSS General Manager Sandip Rai said that the RSS has no issue regarding the contract staff except for the Mother Language News Service, adding that recruitment of the local stringers will also be carried out through a competitive manner. The present government has taken the policy to recruit human resources in the state-owned media outlets by being law-based, transparent, competitive and need-based.
The ministry stated that emphasis has been given for professionalism and institutional strengthening of the state-owned media institutions and ensure institutional governance and fiscal discipline by ending anomalies of the past in the human resource recruitment. General Manager of Gorkhapatra Corporation Hikmat Bahadur Rawal and Acting Chief Administrative Officer of PSB Arati Chataut shared their concerned institutions’ status on human resources management.
