Water, waste mgmt Lalitpur voters’ main concerns

Lalitpur, Nov. 4: The people of Lalitpur want their elected representatives to prioritise drinking water, waste management, healthcare and preservation of language and culture. The Rising Nepal talked to 150 voters from the district – 50 each from its three House of Representatives constituencies – and found that these were the issues most of them wanted to be dealt with.

Ajay Blon, a voter from Mahankal Rural Municipality in Constituency 1, said that he would vote for the candidate who promised to improve his area’s health infrastructure. “The latest dengue outbreak and the COVID-19 pandemic before that showed just how ill-equipped this constituency is to handle health emergencies,” he said. “We have almost no mechanism in place to contain diseases and many of us need to travel to the hospitals in Kathmandu or Lalitpur Metropolitan City (in Constituency 3) to get decent treatment.”

He stressed, “I will support the person who I think will change this situation.”

Meanwhile, over in Lalitpur Metropolitan City (LMC), the largest and most developed city in the district, citizens are concerned about drinking water supply and waste management. Many voters this paper spoke to complained that their localities did not have regular water supply despite being connected to the Kathmandu 

Upatyaka Khanepani Limited’s pipe network and that the metropolis made no effort to collect and manage the garbage.

“These are the issues that should be handled by the local government but since it is not doing much in this regard, I want representatives at the provincial and federal levels to take the initiative,” said Anshu Pradhan, a resident of the city’s Ward No. 11.

In Mahalaxmi Municipality which lies in Constituency 2 as well as in LMC in Constituency 3, many said that they would support candidates who promised to work for the preservation and promotion of the local language and culture.

And a starting point for this should be to stop the destruction of monuments and ancient settlements in the name of road expansion and infrastructure development, 15 voters from 

Tikathali, Imadol, Satdobato, Hattiban, Lubhu, Khokana, Bungamati and Sunakothi stressed in conversation with this daily.

Many first-time voters, though, are more worried about voting properly than about the individuals standing and the pledges they have made.

According to the Election Commission, 243,884 people are eligible to cast their ballot in November 20’s elections for the House of Representatives (HoR) and the Bagmati Provincial Assembly (PA) in Lalitpur. In the elections of 2017, that number was 228,338. Meaning, 15,546 individuals will be voting for their federal and provincial representatives for the first time this year. And of them, the people that The Rising Nepal talked to said that they had not been adequately informed about how to vote.

Pratibha Tamang from Konjyosom Rural Municipality Ward No. 3 said that she did not even know which constituency she lived in and Chetan Maharjan from Godawari Municipality Ward No. 10 shared that he did not understand the First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) and the Proportional Representation (PR) systems well enough.

“We have all been told to vote but we have not been adequately oriented,” Maharjan grumbled. Voters will be presented four ballot papers in the upcoming elections which are now only 16 days away. Through these papers, the citizens will elect four representatives, two (one FPTP and one PR) for the House of Representatives and two (one FPTP and one PR) for the provincial legislature.

“Not a single person has come to our locality to explain this to us,” Tamang grumbled. “I hope I do not end up voting for a candidate I do not like or rendering my vote invalid by making a mistake,” she worried.

There are 63 candidates contesting for three seats in the HoR from the three constituencies of the district. Of them, 25 are independents and 38 are affiliated to different political parties. Similarly, there are 67 candidates vying for six seats in the provincial assembly from the six PA constituencies of the district. Of them, 24 are independents while the remaining 43 represent political parties.