Problems of headless public enterprises deepen
KATHMANDU: State-owned companies, which are currently leaderless, may not be able to see new chief executives for at least two more months, as the Supreme Court has once again postponed the hearing on a case filed against a government body authorised to recommend names for the top post at public enterprises.
The continuous delay in appointment of chief executives has affected decision-making processes at over half a dozen state-owned enterprises and frustrated staff employed there.
The responsibility to select candidates for the post of chief executive at state-owned firms currently rests on the shoulders of the Public Enterprises (PE) Board.
The Board was selecting such candidates through open competition till August last year when one Binit Kumar Singh filed a case at the apex court demanding that the government hand-pick chief executives at public enterprises rather than select them through open competition.
Based on this petition, the Supreme Court, on September 5, asked the PE Board to halt the selection process until issuance of another order.
A hearing by the apex court’s special bench was then supposed to be held on March 6. But it could not take place after the court agreed to reschedule it based on the petitioner’s request. The hearing was then postponed to May 8. “But on May 8, the hearing was again postponed citing presence of only four justices at the court,” PE Board Chief Bimal Wagle said, adding, “If the hearing was conducted that day, the court would have been left with a single justice to deal with other cases.”
The hearing has now been rescheduled for July 10.
While the hearings are being postponed, positions of chief executives at crucial public enterprises like Nepal Telecom, Nepal Electricity Authority, Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC), Citizen Investment Trust, Dairy Development Corporation, Udaypur Cement and Hetauda Cement, among others, are vacant.
Such a gap at the top level generally prevents companies from taking crucial decisions and framing long-term plans, which ultimately frustrate staff members.
One of the major demands placed by employees of NOC, for instance, is appointment of a managing director. “Because of the absence of a leader, we have not been able to take many decisions and address various problems,” employees told The Himalayan Times.
One way to deal with this problem, according to Wagle, is to recruit staff of joint secretary level at companies with vacant top posts. Nepal Electricity Authority has done this at present.
This technique may provide relief to firms, but it would be no more than a stopgap measure, as staff recruited for a temporary period may be reluctant to devise plans to obtain certain long-term goals.
“So to steer a company properly, there is no alternative to hiring a person, who has been given full authority to run a firm for a certain period of time,” Wagle said, adding that can only happen once PE Board is allowed to resume its job.
Since its establishment in December 2011, the PE Board, a body originally formed to monitor, supervise and regulate all state-owned firms, has recommended names for the post of chief executive at 12 public enterprises, ranging from Nepal Airlines Corporation to Beema Sansthan.
Source: THT
