The Revenue paid for the excavation of sand from different rivers of Pokhara including the largest Seti River has been increased highly these days.
According to Pokhara Metropolitan City Office, Revenue Section, even though the COVID insurgency is going on since the previous year, sand excavation is being continued unabated. “As a result, the revenue from excavation activities has been grown up highly than of past years,” Section Chief Ganesh Pandey said.
The Office informed that the revenue paid by different excavation companies added Rs. 300 million in Pokhara Metropolis’s income this fiscal year so far. According to Revenue chief Pandey, this amount is tripled that of previous fiscal years.
Pokhara metropolis has declared 34 places (Ghat) within different rivers allowed for sand excavation. From which yearly almost 3 lakh cubic meters of sand has been excavating.
Among those, much amount of sand has been excavating from the Ramghat Seti River.
After evaluating the Environment Impact Analysis (EIA) and also considering the risk of a huge sand deposited area the metropolitan technical team determines the excavation points within rivers.
This year only metropolis has made an agreement to a dozen contractors allowing them for the excavation from declared points. Once, they agreed with the metropolitan office, they get to excavate all the months of the year except three months of the rainy season. They are paying Metropolis Rs. 710 per cubic meter excavation.
However, the act of excavating has been hit by the COVID insurgencies because the laborers are on leave and the government has not been allowing sand carried vehicles during prohibitory order.
“If there was no prohibitory order, we would have been able to dig up sand completely but due to prohibition we have been able to dig up just 50 per cent sand so far.” one of the contractors Hira Man Bhandari said.
Source : THE RISING NEPAL,
