We would like to express our gratitude to the Government of Nepal (Council of Ministers) for providing responsibility by forming Central ad hoc Executive Committee of Nepal Red Cross Society (NRCS) on 27 July 2020, based on the Section 20 (Sub-Section, 2) of the Social Welfare Act, 2049 BS. This ad hoc committee expresses its commitment to fulfill the responsibility and to ensure transparency, accountability, participation and the spirit of volunteerism in the activities of the organization in order to assure good governance.
Our top priorities are annual renewal of organization registration to maintain the legal status, amendment of the existing statutes of the organization, formulation of the Red Cross law and statutory election.
The committee held meeting twice within the first 15 days of its formation. Responsibilities have been divided among the chairman, office bearers and members of the committee for immediate start of top priority tasks. With serious review on the services, programmes and overall condition of the organization, the full-board committee meeting held on 9-10 August, 2020 drafted a roadmap to also start a long term reform of the organization.
According to the roadmap, concrete corrective measures shall be taken for the betterment of eye hospitals, blood transfusion services, ambulance services, disaster response as well as storage and distribution of relief items. Moreover, a decision is made to move forward adopting thrift, record keeping, security and proper utilization of assets, proper mobilization of other resources including human resources, review of organizational structure, preparation of NRCS Development Plan, as well as review and implementation of post-study recommendations made from various agencies including Government of Nepal, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Cross Societies (IFRC), and auditors.
Our these commitments will help to maintain the credibility of the NRCS gained from the impartial services provided in time of different disasters in the past and the internal conflict situation. These will also promote the volunteerism, guarantee transparency and good governance and to enhance national-international relations and partnerships for humanitarian services.
We feel that it is crucial to make a detailed action plan with timeline over Committee’s priority areas for the next three months and to make it public to all the stakeholders of the Red Cross and community at large. For this, nine task forces have been set up to carry out further study. Even during the lock-down, discussions will be intensified through physical or online platforms as much as possible and tasks will be accomplished to bring a concrete result within the stipulated time.
Last but not the least, we would like to inform that a white paper will be made public shortly to let the public know the situation of overall services, financial, administrative and legal status of the organization. We do have a confident belief that we shall get support from the people and Government of Nepal, donors, partners, media houses, components of the Red Cross Movement and all other stakeholders in our attempts to fulfil its role as an auxiliary to the Government of Nepal in humanitarian field.
