Birendranagar Municipality brings budget of Rs 1.56 billion

KARNALI, June 25: Birendranagar Municipality has released a budget of Rs 1.56 billion for coming fiscal year 2021/22.

At the ninth municipal assembly of the municipality held on Thursday, Deputy-Mayor Mohan Maya Dhakal unveiled the Rs 1.56 billion proposed budget.

Out of total budget, Rs 1.13 billion has been allocated towards current budget while Rs 433.33 million towards capital budget. Similarly, Rs 20.51 million has been allocated towards environment and Disaster Management while Rs 60.816 million towards institutional development, service delivery and good governance.

The municipality has put the health, education, agriculture, tourism, environmental cleanliness, sanitation and infrastructure development in priority in the coming budget.

While releasing the budget, Deputy Mayor Dhakal said that a building of Katakatuw health institution would be developed as municipal hospital to provide quality health service inside municipal area as well as the hospital which is now in operation as a COVID hospital would be operated along with basic and medical service of the municipality. 

Likewise, the budget also mentioned about operating school nursing service at more schools in order to make nursing and social security programme more effective.

Saying the municipality has given priority to women health and employment, Dhakal said priority has been given to different programmes including ‘Sanitary to daughters, Skill and employment to mothers’, establishment of ‘School Education Ensure Scholarship Fund’ as well as income-generation programme to poor parents with collaboration of ward office and school.

Similarly, the Policies and Programmes states that the local governments will take the guardianship of the helpless children and orphans as well as guarantee their education up to the secondary level. 

Similarly, the programme, 'I will Make My School', would be implemented for the overall development of the school and for improvement of the teaching by teachers and learning by students through the 'My One Day' at school. 

It is also stated in the budget statement that programmes as 'Commercialization of Agriculture: Entrepreneurship among Youth', 'Let Us not Keep the Land Barren: Let's Encourage Those Who Want to Till Land', 'One Cooperative, One Production', 'One Village, One Product', 'My School, My Responsibility', 'Environment Protection, Urban Beautification', etc would be implemented. 

Proposal to Declare Sub-metropolis 
There are 79 local bodies including 54 Rural Municipalities and 25 Municipalities in Karnali province. While the rest of the six provinces in the country have sub-metropolis, Karnali is the only province without any sub-metropolis. The provincial capital Birendranagar is also limited to a municipality status.

In this context, a process has been forwarded through the budget statement to declare the Birendranagar Municipality as a Sub Metropolitan City from the next fiscal year. The Ninth Municipal Assembly of the municipality has brought a proposal to request the province government and the federal government to get Birendranagar Municipality declared into a Sub Metropolitan City.