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Kathmandu Friday March 30, 2001 Chaitra 17, 2057.
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What, if the government-owned buildings are
illegal ?
By Razen Manandhar
KATHMANDU - Unfortunately, this pretty little Kathmandu is the capital of the
Himalayan Kingdom. And obviously, the government needs infinite number of buildings to let
the staff stay and work to carry out day to day administration. The need of government
buildings are on the rise and the normal process of building in the capital is so irksome
that on one would be ready to go there (though the credit of making the process of having
building permission goes to the government staff themselves).
Most of the mushrooming government buildings in and around the capital city
is constructed without following the proper way of constructing a building, thanks to the
excessive power the government officers bear and carelessness of the municipal bodies.
Till the building code of 1979 came into existence, there was no necessity
for the government buildings to undergo the process of building permit. After that, the
need to regulate the government building was felt because, for the first time perhaps, the
urban planners realized that only number of building does not make a place city. Voice to
make Kathmandu a well-planned city was on the high and the government buildings could not
escape the cooperative move.
When the building code was developed in 1993, such public buildings were also
brought in the rule’s net. Then the public buildings also had to play a role to help
Kathmandu grow in a systematic way. The buildings are the government’s necessity but
there should be some means to bring arbitrary growing up of buildings without proper plan
into a legal bondage.
According to Local Self-Governance Act 1998, chapter 9 article 150, all
private and government offices must apply to the municipality offices before constructing
a building of any sort. Government offices imply Supreme Court, Parliament, Rajparishad,
Commission of Investigation for Abuse of Authority, Attorney General, Civil Service
Council, Constitutional Institutions’ Offices, Royal Nepal Army and Nepali Police
including all offices and courts.
But the reality is far from bringing the government bodies under the umbrella
of law and order. Being unaware of the legal provisions or overlooking them, construction
of new building, changing the existing shape or adding floors are going on unabashed.
If you go to any government building and ask any body to tell a few things
about the building’s legality, you will hardly find any body who will be ready to
response you. The reason is clear.
A high ranking officer of Physical Planning and Housing Department claims
that most of the government buildings, including those buildings constructed after the
concerned laws were activated, are built illegally. "You can hardly find one single
government building, which had gone through the proper process and are constructed
according to the blue prints," he claimed.
But this uncontrolled buildings seems to be nobody’s headache. Kathmandu
Metropolitan City is the prime body, which controls such constructions, but it is taking
no steps so far in this field. It does not even know how many of the government buildings
have approved the building maps.
"Government offices do not come to us to have their map approved. They
think that it is not necessary and we can’t control them," says Devendra Dangol,
the chief of UDD, the KMC’s prime body to approve such applications for buildings.
He broadly says that except a few, no government building is legal.
Kathmandu Mayor Keshav Sthapit sheds his shoulders, saying that till now KMC
does not have any statistics of buildings with or without permission and no action can be
taken before such database.
KMC has its problems. But it does not mean that everybody can take undue
advantage of the lack of responsible officers in the local authority. Specially, the
government institutions should not be running away from this "civic"
responsibility. If the government itself is running away form its duty how can we expect
the public follow the rules of constructing new houses? The government needs to be
"legal" first and then it can talk about the laws and illegal buildings of the
public.
If law is law, it should mean equal to all.
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