Kathmandu, Aug. 25
The Development and Technology Committee of
the House of Representative has directed the Prime Minister's Office and
Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport (MoPIT) to remove the word
'monorail' from all projects concerned with railway transport development.
National pride project on rail, metro rail
and monorail uses the technical term that has long been outdated from
development planning globally.
"Since the term 'monorail' is removed
from the development plan of many countries, Nepal should erase it from the
projects concerned to railway development. It is inappropriate to allocate
budget to monorail development projects," the committee said in its
decision published on Thursday. However, a meeting of the committee had made
the decision a day before.
The committee has also directed the
government, MoPIT, Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Energy, Water Resources
and Irrigation to give priority to the electrified railway in the days to come
and immediately begin the work to develop the electric structure for the
infrastructure.
Likewise, since the Kurtha-Jaynagar Railway
is facing various problems as less attention was paid for the preparedness
before the operation commencement about five months ago, the government should
urgently establish fuel centre and maintenance workshop, and provide the
required human resources, read the decision.
Meanwhile, the house panel directed the
government including the Ministry of Forest and Environment (MoFE) to
facilitate in the Detailed Project Report and environmental studies of the
roads and bridges in the protected forest areas along the East-West Highway.
Road expansion work is underway at the
Narayangadh-Butwal section of the highway which is the lifeline of business and
transportation in the country. The road will be developed into a four-lane
highway and service lanes. The house panel had conducted a discussion with the
secretaries and officials of MoPIT and MoFE.
The committee expressed dissatisfaction over
the delay in the progress of road expansion which should have been completed by
now but it has achieved just about 19 per cent progress.
Published in The Rising Nepal daily on 26 August 2022.
No comments:
Post a Comment