This is not the first time that the work has been halted in the project. The MWSP, which commenced in 2002 after much delay over the financial closure of the project and protracted negotiations with the locals, was initially estimated to complete in 2006/7. But the completion date has been deferred several times before setting a new deadline of 2013. As the project struggled to raise sufficient funding, its size was reduced. For instance, the project was initially designed to supply 170 million liters of water per day but it was later reduced by half to pump in just 85 million liters of water per day to Kathmandu. This is mainly due to compromise in the reduced processing capacity of the project. Now, the project will have only two reservoirs instead of 11 as planned initially.
Delay in completion of any project work is the worst thing that Nepal can afford to have and it’s even more serious when such a delay is related to a project as vital as supplying water to the capital city that has been reeling under an acute shortage of drinking water. The Melamchi-saga, running over one-and-a-half decades, also shows our failure to prioritize things and take them up responsibly and with urgency. Every party knows how acute drinking water supply problem is in Kathmandu and yet none of them have played a proactive role in removing obstructions to successful and timely completion of the project. Instead, the sympathizers/cadres of various parties at the local level team up to put new and unreasonable demands now and then and the parties do nothing to discourage them from behaving so irresponsibly. Politics is supposed to be for development, but when development is politicized, progress is the last thing we can dream of.
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