Birgunj metro dumps garbage on Telecom office premises

By Dipak Prasad Gautam,Birgunj, Apr. 5: The Birgunj Metropolitan City has dumped seven tractors of garbage on the premises of Nepal Telecom's regional office in Birgunj.

According to the metropolis, the telecom has not repaired the roads it dug up when extending its optical fibres, causing problems for the denizens. Not only that but also the NTC has not paid any heed to the concerns raised about this matter, the metro alleged.

Sarfuddin Miya, head of the metropolitan's Sanitation Division, told The Rising Nepal that the garbage was dumped as a form of protest because the Telecom did not keep its promise of repairing the roads and footpaths it had dug up. 

"It had promised to restore the roads to their original condition by mid-March this year. But they did not do that," he complained. Meanwhile, Ananta Mallik, head of the Telecom's regional office termed the city's action anarchic and coercive that violated the rule of law.

"The contractor is working and only 300 metres of the eight-kilometre road section we were responsible for remain to be reconstructed," he claimed. "There may have been some delays but we are following up. It is not that we have been sitting idly."

Mallik further said that the metropolitan brought the trash at quarter past nine in the morning, before the Telecom's employees had arrived in the office. "We were in continuous contact with them. Yet, they chose to do this without any prior information," he said.

He felt that the metro should not have treated a tax-paying government organisation this way and said that it could have instead issued a warning, imposed a fine or taken some other legal action.