Minister Sita Badi Announces Abolition of Access-Based Grants

Kathmandu. Minister for Women, Children, Gender and Social Security Sita Badi has stated that her ministry has completely abolished all access-based grants. Speaking at a meeting of the Women and Social Affairs Committee under the House of Representatives on Friday, Minister Badi made this disclosure. Minister Badi clarified that a courageous decision had to be taken to remove the grants that were distributed to various organizations from the ministry based on access and influence in the past. At the committee meeting, Minister Badi mentioned that although the scope of work is wide, the limitation of resources and means in the ministry stands as a permanent challenge. She stated that due to limited resources and means, women and targeted groups have not been able to achieve expected results. She informed that a large portion of the ministry's total budget is spent on administrative work, management of juvenile correction homes, and social security, which are mandatory responsibilities. Clarifying the new policy reforms in budget allocation, Minister Badi said, 'Although the scope of the ministry's responsibility is wide, the limited available resources and means have become our permanent challenge. Embracing this reality, we have taken some courageous and necessary reform steps while proposing the upcoming budget. A large portion of the ministry's total budget is spent on administrative work, management of juvenile correction homes, social security, and other mandatory responsibilities.' Minister Badi expressed commitment that although it is not possible to address all expectations and needs at once with limited resources, priority will be given to justice, need, and effectiveness when allocating the budget in the coming days, even if some expectations are not immediately met. She claimed that from now on, the ministry's resource mobilization and work performance will be completely based on transparency and actual needs. She said, 'I want to clarify here that it is not possible to address all expectations and needs at once with limited resources, so some expectations could not be met immediately. However, we have given high priority to justice, need, and effectiveness for budget allocation. In the past, we have the experience that expected results could not be achieved due to the practice of distributing grants to various organizations based on access and influence. Therefore, from this year onwards, such access-based grants have been completely abolished. Now, resource mobilization and work performance will be based solely on transparency and actual needs. And, we believe this will strengthen public resource mobilization and its accountability.'