BHAKTAPUR: The work of tarring 11 meters of roads within the project has started 22 years after the commencement of ‘Kamerotar Land Integration Project’ in Kamerotar within Madhyapur Thimi Municipality. There was a long-running dispute between the landowners and the project as the Kathmandu Valley Development Authority was delaying the work of the project which was started in 2058/59 BS with the aim of completing it in two years.
The project had been selling plots of land with repeated extensions. The project has been extending the deadline time and time again despite repeated pressure from the consumers to complete the project quickly saying that their land has been sold cheaply, the land of the consumers has been used more and the price of the land has been increased by delaying the project.
Mayor Madan Sundar Shrestha had been pressuring the Kathmandu Valley Development Authority to give ownership to the municipality saying that the project was abandoned after the people’s representative came to the municipality. Mayor Shrestha said, “Such a land consolidation project undertaken by Kathmandu Valley Development Authority has never been completed on time. The project was being extended for many years here as well.”
Most of the roads are four meters long. In this project, the remaining main roads were made 11 meters only after the 2072 BS earthquake.
After the municipality took ownership of the project, the work of gravelling all the four and 11 meter roads, laying sewage and drinking water pipes and constructing sidewalks on 11 meter roads has been completed. Mayor Shrestha said that work is underway to construct 1.1 million liters of drinking water tank in the project in the traditional style of historical taps and pots.
The municipality has called for a contract cost of Rs. 742.7 million through the project. Out of the contract agreement of Rs. “If the project had been handed over to the municipality as soon as the people’s representative arrived, we would have been able to complete all the work till now. It took two years to complete the project. Then the Corona epidemic started. We had set a target of finishing the road within two years, but due to the delay of Corona and the contractor, only 24 percent has been completed. ”
Claiming that 90 percent of the work of the project has been completed, he said that the road blacktop will not be stopped now and all the road blacktop will be completed in the next one year. Satya Sundar Shrestha, head of the project, said that the project has repeatedly refused to remove the pole as there is a problem with the black paper as there is a pole of NEA in the middle of the four-meter road inside the project.
He said, “On the one hand, the blacktop work was delayed due to the contractor not starting the work on time. On the other hand, NEA has demanded crores of rupees to remove the electricity pole in the middle of the four-meter road constructed by the project.” He said that there is a plan to complete the project soon.
