Half-baked Decisions

Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala last week overruled a ministerial decision to ban the registration of new electric three-wheelers. This is the second time in the last six months a ministerial decision was annulled by Prime Minister. That time also a minister had revoked a cabinet decision of several months before to ban the import of three-wheeler tempos. This speaks a lot about the decision making process in the government. In the last ten years, people have seen many decisions made by the governments either remaining unimplemented or counter-decisions being made without enough logic and rationale. Many of those decisions have turned out to be half-cooked ones. The government, at several times, has also backed of from implementing its decisions because of resistance of a few people. For example, in the early nineties the then Kathmandu City Council decided to evacuate the hawkers, who had illegally seized the Tundikhelís open air theatre to turn it into an open-air marketplace, from the place but failed to enforce because of the resistance of a few hundred of them. It was done only after the government provided them with an alternate space inside the Exhibition Ground. The place, a government land at a pristine location, has now become a virtual shanty area. It now seems virtually impossible to vacate the area from them. Another example is, the government has virtually shelved the plan to build a land fill site at Syuchatar village in south-west of Kathmandu after the local people protested against the plan. This means if the project is economically and environmentally sound, which the government says it is, the government should go ahead with it despite protests from a few hundred people. If it is not so, then plan was wrong. And the government should take action against those who devised and formulated the project. The shelving of the plan is a setback to the proper management of the wastes. Moreover, it is nothing but the weakness of the government not to be able to implement its decision just because a small number of people are against it.

Coming to the present issue, the promotion of the electric three-wheelers  in place of the diesel versions was considered a big step to reduce air pollution in Kathmandu. The diesel tempos were considered one of the main culprits for air pollution in the valley and the government had decided to replace them either by petrol-running micro-buses with stringent emission control or the electric tempos. However, that decision has also turned out to be a half-baked one. The micro-buses have failed to come mainly because of their high cost and most of them do not meet the emission level. Regarding the electric tempo also nobody at the time of taking the decision gave enough thought to the problem they would bring in the long run. The batteries used by the electric tempos, and for that matter the batteries used by other vehicles too, could bring another set of pollution problems. The discarded batteries of the electric tempos, and also of the other vehicles, could bring severe environmental problems if they are not properly disposed off. So, it looks as if the decisions are often taken with only a narrow perspective and ignoring the long-term implications. This trend will continue until the decision-makers are made fully accountable and answerable to the decisions they make.