A year after inauguration, Dharahara project yet to complete

By Aashish Mishra

Kathmandu, Apr. 25: As he watched the news of Dharahara’s inauguration on television, Suresh Pradhan thought back to his childhood days. Back then, the nine-storeyed tower that collapsed in the massive earthquake of April 25, 2015, used to only open to the public once a year during Dashain.

To climb Dharahara and watch over the city of Kathmandu was an unrivalled experience, an experience that Pradhan, 56, was unfortunately never able to have.

“That is why I was beyond myself when I saw the inauguration because I thought it also meant public opening,” the Swoyambhu-resident told The Rising Nepal. “I thought I would finally get a chance to reach that height that I had dreamed of since I was a boy.”

Sadly though, Pradhan was wrong. The then Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli’s inauguration of the 83.85-metre-tall cylindrical monument on April 24, 2021, was not followed by a public opening. 

In fact, one year on, work is still far from complete and according to the contractor, people may still have to wait a year or more to enter the new Dharahara premises.

“As it stands now, the financial progress of the Dharahara reconstruction project is 65 per cent and the physical progress is 78 per cent,” shared Project Manager Sanjay Nakarmi who represents Raman Construction, the company contracted to build the new Dharahara tower and its surrounding structures.

According to Nakarmi, Raman’s team is currently working on ‘finishing’ the main tower – a construction term that refers to works like facing, plastering, flooring and painting carried out at the concluding stage of construction.

Similarly, work is also ongoing on the construction of the planned museum and the basement. Gardening, landscaping, parking management and the restoration of the historic Sundhara remain to be done, he said.

“All in all, we have utilised Rs. 2.16 billion of our total budget of Rs. 3.48 billion,” he said. “And to complete the remaining work, we have asked for an extension of one to one-and-a-half years.”

Nakarmi said that they had written to the Ministry of Urban Development requesting the extension. Kosh Nath Adhikari, project director of the ministry’s Central Level Project Implementation Unit (Building), said that no decision had been taken on the matter yet.

If granted, this would be the fourth extension given to the Dharahara project. The initial contract, signed on September 30, 2018, required the project to be completed within two years. However, citing the COVID-19 pandemic, the government extended that deadline on three separate occasions and asked the contractor to finish work by April 13, 2022. That date came and went and Dharahara is still nowhere near completion leaving Pradhan to ask, “Why was it inaugurated last year with so much work left?”

At the time of the inauguration, Dharahara had only recorded financial progress of 55 per cent and physical progress of 45 per cent, according to the Office of the Auditor General’s annual report of 2021. 

The inauguration was also done amid a large public ceremony at a time when the country and the capital were seeing a spike in the number of daily COVID-19 infections. Five days after the event, on April 29, prohibitory orders were imposed on the three districts of the Kathmandu Valley to curb the spread of the coronavirus.