KATHMANDU, May 27: The government has envisioned developing new cities in 54 locations along the Mid-Hill and Postal Highways, as well as in the Himalayan region, each capable of accommodating at least 100,000 people.
Accordingly, the government has been allocating a budget every year and has deployed personnel for the projects. However, the progress of all these new city projects has been moving at a sluggish rate.
According to Milan Acharya, chief of the New Town Project Coordination Office, only 2 percent of the overall work under the New Town Project has been completed in 14 years. The project estimates a total cost of Rs 1.178 trillion to successfully implement the program. However, by the Fiscal Year (FY) 2023/24, only Rs 12 billion has been spent on the project.
The New Town Program was originally estimated to take 20 years for its successful completion. Now, 14 years have passed, leaving only 6 years remaining to finish the project. Based on the experience of past projects, it seems unlikely that the remaining 98 percent of progress will be achieved within these 6 years. According to Acharya, the slow progress of the project is mainly due to the limited budget and insufficient manpower allocated by the government.
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The vision behind the New Town Program is to make urbanization a major component of development. The government expects this initiative to increase migration to the new towns rather than from them to other areas. Although land consolidation and development have been prioritized in the new towns, progress has been slow because attention has not been adequately focused on this program. Acharya also stated that the government has not provided a sufficient budget for the development of the new towns.
A budget of Rs 1.47 billion has been allocated for 54 new towns in the current FY. If this amount is to be distributed among all the new towns, each would receive less than Rs 30 million. “How can a new town be developed with just Rs 30 million?” said an employee of the Coordination Office.
According to Bina Chakatu, information officer at the New Town Project Coordination Office, out of the total budget allocated for the new towns, 11 towns — Phidim, Basantpur, Khurkot, Galchi, Dumre, Burtibang, Chaurjahari, Bheri Ganga, Rakam Karnali, Sanfebagar, and Patan — have each been allocated a budget ranging from Rs 100 to 110 million in the current FY.
Budgets have been allocated only to those offices where liabilities have been created. To prevent migration and promote balanced regional development, the government launched a plan 14 years ago (in 2068 BS) to build new towns in 10 locations along the Mid-Hill Highway. Since then, the number of new towns has increased almost every year, and now the total has reached 54.
All the new town projects envisioned by the government have been managed on an acting basis by the related offices. So far, no Divisional Engineer (DE) with the rank of undersecretary, as per the sanctioned positions, has been assigned to the New Town Project offices even once. Due to the absence of DEs as per the sanctioned posts, engineers with the rank of Officer have been acting in their place.
Out of the 54 new towns across the country, 11 have separate project offices and dedicated staff, while the remaining are overseen by project offices under the Department of Urban Development and Building Construction. These staff members have been given dual responsibilities. Employees of the Coordination Office say that due to staff shortages, it has not been possible to assign DEs to all new town offices as per the sanctioned positions. A senior official of the office stated, “The performance of the projects is affected when the project chief is assigned as per the sanctioned posts and when they are not.”
Whether in the City Development Committee meetings or in district-level coordination meetings, the absence of a project chief appointed according to the sanctioned positions leads to different approaches when discussing with heads of other agencies. Overall, the perspective on managing the projects also varies. Each new town project office envisioned by the government has sanctioned staff strength of 13 employees.
Each new town project office is supposed to have six technical staff members, but currently, only two or three technical employees are working in each office. Not a single office has the full number of technical staff as per the sanctioned positions. The New Town Project offices fall under the Ministry of Urban Development. The ministry has created DE posts specifically for the new town project offices. However, even though these positions were created with the new towns in mind, after promotion, DEs are reluctant to be posted to the new town project offices.