Strangely, construction work appears to have commenced with earnest at the pillars that once supported the superstructure, perhaps keeping an eye on the approaching end of the current fiscal year. The daily occurring mini jams at the ring road intersection of the airport caused by vehicles approaching from the east and waiting for turning right toward the airport have eluded the bright minds of engineers and traffic controllers at Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) and its parent ministry of culture and tourism. Instead of developing an under-bridge and associated access road to solve the persistent problem, the dimwits seem merely content with spending the budget and pocketing their respective percentages. Hope the newly posted secretary at the ministry with an engineering degree will take cognizance of the issue.
While the planners at CAAN are known to be very good at appropriating funds for various projects, whether or not they make economic sense, and under suitable political pressure of course, they are yet to develop a sense of accountability toward the field they represent, if not the nation. But then, expecting accountability from the minnows alone would be rather unfair, when the big fish of this so-called nation are ever busy bargaining for power and pelf, nation be damned, who cares?
It might be worthwhile to recall that CAAN had been raised primarily to obviate the maladies of a typical bureaucracy in order to provide for an efficient civil aviation system, but then efficiency in Nepal has never been a virtue and therefore continues to occupy a backseat. In the name of autonomy, CAAN has now been turned into a profligate and wayward spender, utterly disregarding its very raison d’être. Every office bearer worth his salt is simply concerned with raking in commission, additional foreign trips and additional income by utilizing the provisions of the regulations (existing or not), of course in strong connivance with the higher-ups.
The present republican Nepal, therefore, continues to be a blessing for the CAAN’s corrupt who continue to make hay while the sun of political instability shines, and the lone passenger languishes, courtesy our incompetent leaders. And it remains to be seen as to when this ´golden gate´ of corruption will be brought down.
Most discerning air passengers can be heard cribbing at the non-existent state of services available at the airports. They are not entirely wrong, after all one pays for services that one can feel and as passenger service charges are levied individually, expecting some visible form of the service is only but natural. This inability to feel the services being paid for by the passengers can only be attributed to the unsatisfactory service delivery, a direct outcome of the incompetence of the airport management.
Airport operations is a diverse technical field, where a wide variety of systems must remain operational for its smooth running. The systems include, apart from operations manpower, electronics and electro-mechanical equipment. The purchase, maintenance and operations of such equipment require dedicated engineering manpower that has to be trained on the specific equipment. However, sadly, this planning doesn’t include the full product life-cycle of the equipment and the sole objective remains fixated at commission that accompanies every single instance of procurement. And once the equipment has been bought (sometimes not even installed), the mission is often deemed accomplished for the budget has been spent and the pockets are bulging.
High-value equipment, like state-of-the-art fully-electronics-controlled aviation fire tenders costing over Rs 80 million each, are being bought with little regard to the quality of maintenance manpower available to support its economic life-cycle. The maintenance trainings continue to be attended by technicians with little knowledge of control electronics. Such egregious blunders in the past have often resulted in sustained outages of the equipment and leading to passenger flights to affected airports with defunct fire-fighting capabilities, exposing unbeknownst to the ultimate stakeholder, the passenger, to unacceptable risks. Often, such equipment outages have also resulted in over-night redirection of such assets from other airports to Kathmandu in order to ostensibly maintain a stated level of fire-fighting readiness, else international airlines simply refuse to fly to Kathmandu.
Systems including stand-by diesel generators, heating ventilation and air-conditioning equipment, fire-fighting and rescue equipment, escalators, and vehicles together used at airports are getting specialized by the day and it is not possible for an engineer or two, no matter how smart, to grasp alone. However, in view of the little career opportunities available at CAAN for electro-mechanical engineers, no individual with aspirations of a real engineering career would wander along for a long inning. The available ones are simply compelled to wait for a better opportunity to move on. Thus, in reality, most sensitive electro-mechanical procurements in CAAN are being performed at the judgment of non-graduate engineers while the Nepal Engineering Council (NEC) strangely prefers to maintain a studied silence. Perhaps the office bearers at NEC believe that registering graduate engineers is an end in itself and available alternatives to engineering graduates should suffice to do the job, sloppy or not.
Sadly, identical is the case with electrical engineering where highly sensitive as well as expensive airport electrical installations like airfield lighting and associated power systems are being installed by the management without any meaningful engineering review by the professionals registered with engineering council. The system-design approval borders on the reckless, having been prepared by outsiders, including retired CAAN officials, and clearly lacking objective peer review as well as professional supervision. The present republican Nepal, therefore, continues to be a blessing for the CAAN’s corrupt who continue to make hay while the sun of political instability shines, and the lone passenger languishes, courtesy our incompetent leaders. And it remains to be seen as to when this ´golden gate´ of corruption will be brought down.
pilots_nepal@yahoo.com
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