Kathmandu, December 18
The Parliament Secretariat is preparing to put an e-attendance system in place to discourage the trend of lawmakers’ lack of participation in the parliamentary committee meetings.
According to Secretariat Spokesperson Rojnath Pandey, the preparations are on for introducing e-attendance aimed to make lawmakers procedurally bound for spending the required hours in parliamentary committee meetings.
National Assembly Chair Ganesh Prasad Timilsina has already directed the Secretariat to manage the electric attendance.
A lack of quorum at the meeting of the parliament and the parliamentary committee has often taken place, resulting in the postponement of the meeting. Lawmakers have often refrained from taking part in committee meetings citing various personal reasons. This has resulted in a lack of in-depth discussions while discussing bills and drafting laws.
Lawmakers have also been accused of taking part in events held by non-government and private organisations rather than attending parliamentary committee meetings.
“Participation of parliamentarians in programmes hosted by any non-governmental organisation is an old persisting problem. The parliament should release names of lawmakers who didn’t attend meetings resulting in the delay of drafting or amendment of an act,” said Ram Narayan Bidari, a former member of the National Assembly.
E-attendance system aims to track the lawmaker’s activities, thus helping sort out these problems.
The data shared by the parliamentary committees shows that except for former PMs Madhav Kumar Nepal, Dr Baburam Bhattarai and Jhalanath Khanal, other top leaders’ parliamentary attendance is discouraging.
“The scant presence of lawmakers in the parliament and parliament committee meetings is a problem. In many instances the meetings had to be suspended due to the lack of the required quorum,” said Bishal Bhattarai, UML’s former chief whip.
