City planning toothless for three decades

Bishnu Prasad Aryal
Kathmandu, October 13

Despite city planning effective from 1976, the city sprawl has been rising in a high tempo, challenging the healthy urbanisation.

According to the Ministry of Physical Planning and Works, the city planning came into effect since 1976 to manage the urban in a systematic manner.

"However, the planning system failed to solve the problems but it further created chains of problems," said Praphulla Man Pradhan, programme manager of the UN Habitat. "We are yet to develop the mechanism to cope up with the mismanaged growing cities," he said.

Pradhan said that it was time to think of the scary situation of the Kathmandu valley. "The problems of garbage, drinking water, electricity, roads, crime and violence, slums and squatters, corruption and environmental degradation are rising day by day," he said. "On the other hand, more than 40,000 street vendors in the valley are adding woes to the situation."

The number of houses out side the ring road is increasing by 15 per cent every year. "Along with the increase in population, the government has failed to address issues such as education, health and employment among others," said Pradhan.

Rabin Lal Shrestha of Water Aid Nepal said that only 27 per cent of the total population in Kathmandu was provided with safe drinking water. "Rest of them are forced to have shortage and unsafe drinking water," he said.

Shrestha said that the government could not achieve anything in the last three decades on the process of urbanisation. "There is poor monitoring system and lack of accountability to the issues," he said. "This is worse to say that 33 per cent of people in the valley use shared toilets."

"We formulated planning policies but forgot to implement through thorough monitoring mechanism," he said. "Instead, we were lured to monitory benefits."

Indra Bahadur Shrestha, Director General, at the Department of Urban Development and Building Construction under the MoPW, admitted that the policies were not effectively implemented. "The government is planning to coordinate with the I/NGOs to achieve the expected results through monitoring and implementation of the policies," he said.

Assistant Minister for MoPW Kalawati Devi Pasawan said that the chief of the government bodies were irresponsible to their duty and responsibility. "They have failed to implement the existing laws and rules," said Pasawan.

When people come to government offices for the service, chiefs of the municipalities send them to the District Development Committee and vice-versa, said assistant minister Paswan. "So the government officials should work for the interests of people," she added.