Kathmandu, June 10 -- The government is preparing to introduce a legislative provision to summarily retire around 10,000 civil servants in a single sweep. The Ministry of Land Management, Cooperative, Federal Affairs and General Administration has drafted a fresh Federal Civil Service Bill containing a special, one-time provision targeted at bureaucratic downsizing.

According to this proposal, any civil servant who has either completed 30 years of service or reached the age of 55 will be forcefully retired upon the enactment of the law. Data maintained by the Department of National Personnel Records reveals the massive scale of this intervention. Normally, regular mandatory retirements account for only 2,000 to 3,000 personnel per fiscal...