Tracking Local Government in response of current pandemic COVID-19.

The Federal system of Nepal has transformed the unitary structure of governance so that more powers are given to the sub-national governments. As per the new constitution, the nation now has 7 states and 753 local governments and one federal government.

However, the current situations of these competencies are governed under a rigorous central system of the unitary government. While most federal countries have constitutionally entrenched legislative power to two orders of government, Nepal has taken a step further by introducing third tier of government into its constitutional framework. The structure and the division of the State power among three tiers of government is specified in the schedules 5,6,7,8 and 9. The sub-national units are allowed to develop their own policies to meet their own needs to promote innovation and experiment in policymaking, enabling states to pioneer innovative policies.

These divisions are guided by the federations principles of self-rule and shared rule-territorial autonomy of sub(national) units.  

The Schedule 8 of the Constitution of Nepal prescribes the range of competencies that come exclusively under the purview of the local government. This includes both a legislature and an executive role guaranteed in the constitution.

While we look at the Local Government Operation Act 2017, which has provision for effective operation of the third tier of the government which gives detail explanation of various competencies of Schedule-8 containing set of 22 jurisdictions and few on Schedule 9 of the concurrent Jurisdictions. Out of these 22 lists of jurisdictions in schedule-8; 1, 8, 10, 20 has given the local government enough capacity to act before any type of disaster.  The shared power of all three tiers of government at Schedule 9 gives list of 15 jurisdictions of which in current situation of COVID-19 pandemic health is a major point where all layers of government has to work together. However, there seems to be a lot of lacking in planning and preparedness and there is no proper coordination between these 3 layers of government for efficient prevention, control and treatment of this diseases.

We have tried to list the legislative response of the Pokhara Metropolitan City in this pandemic COVID-19 to observe the response of the local government in case of pandemic.