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Kathmandu Saturday February 16, 2002 Falgun 04, 2058.
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Given no option, Bishnumati
squatters have nowhere to go
By Shikha Manandhar
KATHMANDU, Feb 15: The residents on Bishnumati
river-banks, numbering in the hundreds, are willing to give up their settlement for a link
road coming up alongside the river. They welcome the idea of the road, but they don’t
want to pay heed to the eviction notice unless the government provides them an alternative
settlement.
Most of these residents are squatters.
The eviction notice issued on 19 January wanted
these settlers—largely the Newar community—to leave their shelter this past
Thursday, but around 163 families living on the river-banks (Ward No. 13), for the past
three decades or so, are not willing to budge unless the government compensates them
adequately.
"This is not logical at all. We are as much
citizens of this country as any others. We are willing to move for the road, but if the
government does not provide us alternative land, where shall we go?" asks Sarala
Lama, helplessly. The Bishnumati bank at Dhaukhel has been home to Sarala’s family
for some three decades.
The proposed Bishnumati Link Road is to span a
distance of 2.8 kilometres, linking Teku to Lekhnath Sadan of Sorhakhutte. The plan was
mooted as part of a larger scheme to deal with the growing traffic congestion in the
Valley, say officials at the Urban Development and Building Construction Department. A
decade ago, the road was to be built with the help of funds from the Asian Development
Bank, but as that did not materialise, now it is solely a Nepali government venture.
The project engineer for the road, Navaraj
Pyakurel, is firm that the settlers have to go. "As the decision on eviction has been
finalized, we want no more obstacles to the project." He does not want to view the
settlers’ case sympathetically since he says they have always known that they were
living on public property.
"How their problem gets solved is none of
our concern," says the engineer.
But for the hundreds of settlers, that will
sound like an apathetic statement. These settlers at Dhaukhel, Tankeshwar, Khusibel and
Dhumakhel of the Bishnumati banks, want the government to either provide them alternative
land, or compensate them the money that they had to spent in building their houses.
A couple of NGOs have now come to the help of
these families facing eviction. "The government should have provided the squatters a
better alternative before they were asked to leave their settlements," says Lajana
Manandhar, Director of Lumanti Support Group for Shelter (LSGS), an NGO working to reduce
urban poverty. She says since these people have been living there for decades, the
government ought to give them a better deal.
Many Newari families began squatting on the
Valley river banks in the 1960s, and after the restoration of democracy in 1990, people
from all communities and from different parts of the country, began settling on these
banks.
Apart from LSGS, the Nepal Settlement Protection
Society (NSPS), is also lobbying for the cause of the Bishnumati squatters.Says Deepak
Rai, NSPS General Secretary," As the condition of the country is wretched, the rural
people have no other option other than to migrate to the city to make ends meet. Then they
end up as squatters." Rai also stresses adequate compensation before the settlers are
moved out.
At the moment, the sqatter families are going
through intense psychological and emotional trauma. The worst affected are the 38 families
of Dhaukhel who stand to lose their houses built years ago. And since an emergency is on,
they cannot take legal action to question the government decision. All that they can do is
to hold meetings amongst themselves and with the authorities concerned to find a way out.
None of them wants to go through what a squatter
experienced when she was moved out of her shelter below the Bagmati bridge at Thapathali
ahead of the recent SAARC Summit. She died homeless.
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