Code & Construction

THE Kathmandu Valley, in many ways, is an urban chaos. Lack of city planning over the decades has told on the cityscape badly. The frenzied pace at which construction activities went on in the city core areas of the three cities of the Valley without a long-term vision has resulted in an urban nightmare. Multi-storey houses spring up in the most unlikely places, adjacent to monuments of immense cultural significance. The public land is encroached upon with impunity. Narrow roads get narrower, with all its effects on the traffic movement. The ten-year old existing building code of the Kathmandu metropolis, for example, is often violated with house-builders having comfort in the knowledge that the enforcement mechanism is weak and they will not be easily penalised. It has been felt that the existing building code itself was much less than perfect and urban experts have been pointing out that it needed to be upgraded. As a result of a poor building code that did not embrace the needs of a fast-growing city, Kathmandu keeps seeing cinema halls and hospitals springing up in the most congested residential neighbourhoods. Hotels and commercial buildings come up without regard to having a minimum parking space. A news in this daily the other day informed that the Kathmandu cityspace may be arrested from getting worse if a new comprehensive scheme to set things right is implemented. The Kathmandu Valley Mapping Programme (KVMP), a joint venture of Kathmandu Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) and the European Union, is launching a scheme to regulate the building pattern to control haphazard urbanisation. The programme will set new standards for housing construction and improve the system of traffic management, mapping of the valley and number of houses.

According to the plan, the new standard, approved by the Kathmandu Metropolis Council seven months ago, makes it compulsory to have the design approval from the Physical Planning Advisory Committee for the construction of public buildings like cinema halls, apartments, nursing homes, hotels and so on. The scheme to bring some order to the chaotic building scene in the Valley is welcome. But it will come to nought, if again the code is not strictly implemented. If the existing code itself were strictly put into force in the past, Kathmandu would not have seen the higgledy-piggledy construction all over the city. Hence, the KVMP and KMC must bear it in mind that unless enforcement mechanisms are sound and workable, a new building code would not by itself have a salutary effect on the Valley cityspace.

Children First, Please!

DURING the inoculation of Hepatitis "C" vaccine to children of the Tharu community at Jaleshwor Hospital of Mahottari district, the Minister for Health Dr. Upendra Devkota, as per a news item carried by this daily the other day, said that the government is committed to save children from various kinds of diseases. Children, apart from being the most vulnerable section of the society, are also the nation's future leaders and citizens. Vulnerable in the sense that they, unlike their peers, are not able to articulate their specific needs, wants and aspirations. And the nation's future lies in that these same vulnerable section of the society, upon reaching adulthood, are not only going to shoulder the onerous task of contributing their mite to the nation's development endeavours but also become responsible citizens of the country. It is for this very reason that all nations, rich or poor, big or small, spare no efforts to ensure their children's all-round development. Amongst such endeavours, inoculating the children to safeguard their health from various diseases is but just one. In this regard, Nepal, despite being a resource-crunched, cash-strapped nation, is definitely not lagging behind other nations. The series of inoculation programmes and campaigns being launched periodically by the government, particularly the concerned health authorities, to protect the children from various maladies are a case in point.

Yet, going by the existing health delivering facilities on the one hand and the nominal, if not the glaring absence, of even primary health posts in some rural and remote parts of the nation on the other, it goes without saying that if all the nation's children are to be afforded the much-needed opportunity to grow up as healthy citizens of the country, then the concerned health agencies and authorities need to renew their laudable efforts. This, at a time when the existing health delivery services and facilities, due to the lack of adequate resources, are being stretched thin, could be a daunting challenge for them to surmount. The more so when the nation is singularly devoid of any modern medical facilities to manufacture the required vaccines to safeguard the children's health. And hence, has to either purchase them or depend on the largesse of its development partners to obtain them. Notwithstanding all this, the children, since they are in their formative age, simply cannot be asked to wait till better days.