Consular services to be available at local levels

Gaighat, Sept. 1

Foreign Affairs Minister, Dr. Narayan Khadka has said that consular service will be expanded to the municipal level with the help of information technology.

He said that ending the current situation of having to go to the ministry in Kathmandu even for small work related to foreign employment and some other tasks, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) has started to cooperate with local levels in providing consular services.

FM Dr. Khadka said this while addressing an interaction and orientation programme on providing consular services in cooperation with the local levels organised by the Department of Consular Services (DoCS) under the MoFA on Thursday targeting the municipalities of Udayapur, Bhojpur and Khotang districts.

The consular services being provided by the DoCS only from Kathmandu are being expanded to all 753 local levels of the country through online technology.

Minister Khadka said that the consular service is going to be expanded to the local levels because the basic documents have to be verified by them to provide necessary legal actions and rescue Nepali in problems abroad.

Dr. Khadka said that in the current context where more than 4 million Nepali citizens are engaged in employment in more than 130 countries across the world, the consular service is directly connected with the people. "So, there is a pressing need to decentralise it. The local governments are provided with the consular app of the MoFA," he said.

According to the minister, with revolutionary changes in information technology, the system prepared by the Government of Nepal and its subordinate bodies will determine the standards of service in Nepal.

Since the ward offices are the first office to register the birth of any citizen, a link is created between the MoFA and those offices.

Director General of the DoCS, Dhan Bahadur Oli, said that the local residents can be facilitated from the local level as the latter is provided with a login account in the online system of the DoCS which creates a direct connection with the department.

According to him, after the implementation of this system, services including rescue of those stranded abroad, searching for missing persons, bringing bodies of the injured, sick, frauds, dead persons to Nepal, claiming compensation, claiming insurance money, birth, marriage, relationship verification, marital status and divorce for the purpose of sending abroad could be obtained from the local level.

Applications such as document certification and certification of legal rights can be sent to the DoCS directly from the ward offices and the progress of the work can also be viewed.

Published in The Rising Nepal daily on 1 September 2022. Inputs from Gaighat reporter.