People living around the small lakes of Pokhara have asked for their land to be freed up for financial transactions. The government froze almost 400 Ropanis of private land around the Dipang, Khaste, Maidi and Neurenil lakes 14 years ago in order to protect them.
As a result, the owners have not been able to perform any business deals based on the land for nearly one and a half decades. Now, they are demanding that their land be opened up and have begun meeting with authorities and stakeholders for the same. According to Kriti Ballav Tripathi, social worker in the Maidi Lake area, the landowners are also preparing to send a delegation to meet with the government of Gandaki Province.
At the initiative of the then District Development Committee of Kaski and the Lake Development Committee, the government froze all lands within a hundred-meter radius of the lakes’ shores in 2007 and stipulated that they could not be bought, sold or leased. Only farming was allowed.
However, the landowners say that this arrangement is unscientific and has tied them down. “The 100-meter distance should not be the same for big and small lakes. Since the water level in these lakes is significantly lower compared to the larger lakes of Pokhara, we want the blocked area to be fixed at 20 metres,” Manoj Poudel, a resident of the Dipang Lake area, told The Rising Nepal.
Ganga Ram Tripathi of Sisuwa, Pokhara Metropolitan City–30 says that every inch of land he owns falls within the blocked area and this has created big problems for him. “We need to use our land for financial transactions to survive,” he said.
Since the smaller lakes are not as popular as the larger lakes of the city, the locals around them say they do not have as many choices of businesses and livelihoods as those living around the bigger, popular lakes. Hence, they need to be able to use their land for commerce, they argue.
Source : TRN,
