After the promulgation of New constitutions in Nepal in 2015, the country is restructured in a federal system of governance. The new restructure has replaced unitary governance with a federal governance system. According to the new provisions the country has federal, 7 provincial, and 753 local governments. Article 17 of the new constitutions have provided executive power to the local government. Annex 8 of the same constitutions has delegated 22 single authorities and annex -9 has also mentioned about common jurisdiction of local, provincial, and federal governments. Pokhara metropolitan city is one of the 6 metropolitan cities and 753 local governments. It is responsible to manage the 464 Sq. KM. land and satisfying to 0.6million people’s hopes and aspirations.
It has been providing services to citizens and operating development activities based on the given authorities by the constitutions. It is one of the responsible and authorized institutions to ensure constitutional rights and local development activities. The quality of the services and development works conducted by the metropolitan city not only determines the credibility of the metropolitan city but also influences the sustainability of democracy and federalism. This is a very closed form of government to work with the local people. Since federalism is totally new concept, the staff members and people’s representatives need to understand the core essence of their role and responsibilities in this newly changed context. They must enthusiastic to provide the quality of the service and development work under their leadership.
To develop the new identity of the Pokhra Metropolitan City, the staff members, and people representatives must develop a positive attitude within them and learn to search or inquire about the positive cores within their-selves and metropolitan city rather than weakness and broken system. The transformative changes in Pokhara Metropolitan city come from the metropolitan city system rather than from the outside. The sharp thinking, behavior, and action of the staff members and people’s representatives are the key to transform the metropolitan city. To unleash their positive potential and heighten hope, aspiration, enthusiasm for providing the quality of the services to the people and raise the credibility of the metropolitan city, a two “Appreciative Inquiry Training for Strength Analysis and Institutional Capacity Strengthen of Pokhara Metropolitan City” to the staff members was conducted. All the department heads have participated in the training. The main aim of the training was to shift the paradigm of thinking and develop new thinking and the attitude of yes, I can do and yes, I am responsible for the positive transformation of the Pokhara Metropolitan City.
In the training process, all the participants engaged to discover their personal, departmental and metropolitan city’s strengths. They amazed to see the power, experiences, learning, and desires of the discovery process. The senior officer of the education department Mr. Bahsanta Raj Paudel reflected that this has given him new energy him which he was ignoring for the last 53 years. Ms. Sabina Gautam reflected the discovery process has shifted the thinking paradigm and learned that there is an alternate problems inquiry. Based on the discovered strengths and positive cores they envisioned a new Pokhara by the next 10 years.
They explored many creative ideas for transformation and proved that they are capable enough to bring positive transformation within the next 10 years and convert Pokhara into one of the best, developed, and modern cities. They identified a major new system that needed to be developed to make the new cities and recommended the major action that needed to be adopted from the day to move forward to achieve the envisioned dream.
