750,000 trees to be cut in the first phase to build Nijgadh Airport

Kathmandu, Sept. 15: Minister for Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation Rabindra Adhikari has said that the construction of international airport in Nijgadh of Bara district would move into execution very soon.

He also urged one and all to support in the development of the airport, one of the largest infrastructure projects in south Asia.

“Nijgadh Airport and Kathmandu-Terai Fast Track road will be the game changers in Nepal’s infrastructure development and economic prosperity. The airport is a futuristic project being developed to cater to the growing need of aviation service due to increasing tourism and trade as well as mobility of people,” he said at an interaction organised at the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN).

He said that the protesting in the name of environment was useless as the government was duly following the environment protection guidelines and would plant trees elsewhere as the compensation.

According to the prevailing policies, the developer of the infrastructure projects should plant 25 trees for every tree fell.

About 769,691 trees – 194,480 large and 575,211 small – needed to be cut in the first phase of the airport construction which will be expanded in 2593.95 ha area. It will have 3600 m long runway.

The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of the project has already approved by the Ministry of Forestry and Environment three months ago.

The CAAN has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Nepal Army to clear the forest, and construct access road and periphery road.

Minister Adhikari said that the government has decided to develop the national pride project as per PPP-BOOT (Public Private Partnership – Build Own Operate Transfer) model.

CAAN Director General Sanjiv Gautam said that the company for the preparation of the Detailed Project Report (DPR) would be selected within a month.

This would be the second DPR for the same project, the first one was prepared by a Korean company Land Mark Worldwide (LMW) in 2011. But, parliamentary committees had directed the government to review the agreement with the LMW in 2016 saying the DPR was not transparent and clear.

Gautam said that the country needed a large international airport as the capacity of the only international airport, Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) in Kathmandu was already saturated and the two under-construction airports - Gautam Buddha International Airport and Pokhara International Airport – will also have limited capacity and couldn’t be operated with the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO)’s category 4: Full Fledge compliance. 

“The Nijgadh Airport can be operated as per the ICAO Annexes compliance and can be used as Transit Hub. Aviation service can be extended to any country from there,” he said.

Published in The Rising Nepal daily on 16 September 2018.