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| Kathmandu Sunday March 17, 2002 Chaitra 04, 2058. |
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Demolition works at
Ranipokhari begin
Post Report
KATHMANDU, March 16 Around 70 workers and
officials of the Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) today afternoon demolished a two-storey
building at the southern part of the historic Ranipokhari to make a green garden there.
"The whole of the building will be
demolished by night. I will not return home until I see the historic statue of King Pratap
Malla from here, which is presently covered by this ugly structure," said Keshav
Sthapit, who was at
the site.
KMC got the permission to demolish the building
and shops owned by a government body called Auditorium and Public Garden Development
Committee (APGDC) and develop a garden around the 332 years old pool, on December 20 last
year prior to the 11the SAARC Summit, but it could not materialise then.
When the demolition works started today, the
main building, which housed a Tasty Café and Urban Development Department of KMC, was
already vacated.
A notice was issued by KMC asking all the
shop-owners to clear the area by last Wednesday but none of the shop-owners felt necessary
to follow the notice, the KMC officials said.
Deputy Mayor Bidur Mainali said that a group of
shop-owners visited him Friday asking for some more days.
"Waiting for some more days,however, could
not be the solution, so I promised to help them with KMC’s trucks."
Those shop-owners, who asked for transportation
facilities were given trucks to take away their belongings from the shops.
The shop-owners’ group had visited several
ministers and opposition leaders to have the KMC’s plan postponed. Some of them had
promised to stop the mayor from destroying the shops.
"Even the ministers cheated us,"
remarked the shop-owners at the demolition site.
The owner of Tasty Café, at the rooftop of the
building, Praja Rajbhandari said that he would not oppose the KMC’s plan to beautify
the pond but complained that KMC should have given them enough time to find out an
alternative.
He said KMC had given them a public notice to
evacuate the area and also helped them to take away the commodities but it was not enough.
He said that had invested around Rs 6,000,000 in
the past two and a half years for his café taking in view the 10 years agreement he had
with the APGDC.
Prajapati added that APDGC did not provide any
compensation and did not even allow to file a complaint for that purpose.
"How can we complain the KMC when the
concerned authority, which had the agreement with us remained silent."
Sahadev Sharma, senior manager of the APGDC said
that the committee had to obey the cabinet decision and could not help the shop-owners.
" However, KMC should have consulted us
before issuing the public notice," he said.
Meanwhile, a committee was formed in the
Ministry of Local Development with representatives from the Ministry, KMC and the garden
but it would not deal with the shops of Ranipokhari but on ways how to transform the
ownership of the APGDC from the Ministry to
the KMC.
Attempts were made to transform the ownership of
the committee to the KMC in 1982 and 1992 also when Kamal Chitrakar and PL Singh were
mayors but all in vain.
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