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Kathmandu Friday October 13, 2000 Aswin 27, 2057.
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Bird menace at TIA
According to a news report, the bird menace at
the country’s only international airport has made airlines servicing at Tribhuvan
International Airport (TIA) reconsider continuing their service. If this alarming news
does not goad the government to do something, we can look forward to a significant decline
in tourism revenue. At this rate, it will take only a few more hits before the birds drive
away the planes and the tourists. This would be a terrible setback to the tourism
industry, a significant contributor to the country’s economy. It is indeed saddening
to note that all this could happen because the government failed to manage the garbage
that Kathmandu generates.
Kathmandu does not have a dumping site. So,
Gokarna was being used as a temporary landfill site until some months ago local residents
stopped all dumping activity there. It was then that the Ministry of Local Development hit
upon the dumbest idea of all -- to dump garbage along the bank of the Bagmati river from
Gokarna to Gujeshwori and then to build a road over it.
Ecologists and everybody concerned about the
valley’s deteriorating environment had criticised this move then. The Civil Aviation
Authority of Nepal (CAAN) had also communicated to the Ministry about the possible hazards
of dumping. Despite this, the Ministry went ahead with its plan and started dumping waste.
Even when Gokarna, which is 5 kilometres from the airport, was being used as a dumping
site, it violated the International Civil Aviation Organisation’s (ICAO) requirement
that a dumping site must be located at least 13 kilometres away from an international
airport. Now, the dumping is being done barely 500 metres away from TIA.
TIA officials attribute the increased bird
activity to the seasonal emergence of earthworms at the airport. If this is the main
reason, then how is it that bird menace at TIA was unheard of until last year? Obviously,
the dumping activity for the proposed road is mainly responsible for the threat to
aircraft. With five bird hits, TIA has become a most unsafe airport. It is sheer luck that
no major disaster has occurred as yet, but if the birds cannot be kept away, who knows one
day something terrible can happen that will keep both the airlines as well as tourists
away from Nepal for a long time to come.
The government must heed this warning and
intervene. Dumping along the Bagmati riverbank must not only stop, whatever has been
dumped must also be relocated. The government would also do well to consider relocating
the international airport to somewhere away from the city. Apart from being too close to
Kathmandu City, it has also become too crowded. But first, the dumping must stop.
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