KMC removes 38 truckloads of useless wires

BY SUSHMA MAHARJAN,Kathmandu, May 26: Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) is working to make the city beautiful and orderly, mitigate the risk of accidents posed by haphazard wires, and protect the wealth of its inhabitants. To that end, it started removing jumbled wires inside the metropolis on May 8.  

Since then, it has removed 38 truckloads of unwanted wires and placed it at Teku Police Station, informed assistant spokesperson for KMC Deepak Adhikari.

Management of the wires that have been hanging from the poles here and there for more than half a decade is not an easy job, though. A fortnight has already passed since the work began. Though people might not experience drastic change for now, one can see difference while walking across the roads at New Road, Maitighar Mandala, Tripureshwor and Baneshwor areas. 

Adhikari said, “Wires in the metropolis were tangled deeper than imagined. Proper management of such haphazard wires is an uphill battle. It might take a year or more to get rid of such useless wires.”

Service providers like the Nepal Telecom (NTC), Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA), internet service providers and television networks have been hanging wires on poles rather than properly managing it. According to Adhikari, 70 per cent of the such wires were useless, of which, most were of the NTC. If two metres of wire out of five metres are used, the left out wires are rolled up in the poles instead of taking them back, unnecessarily burdening the metropolis, he added. 

He said that at the first phase, the metropolis was removing jumbled wires in four different routes – Maitighar Mandala to Tribhuvan International Airport, New Road to Makhan, Tripureshwor to Kalanki and Tripureshwor to Maharajgunj. 

According to him, a team of 50 people were mobilised, including 15 City Police and representatives of the NTC, NEA, Internet Service Provider Association Nepal (ISPAN), Kathmandu Valley Police Office and others. They were divided into four groups for the management of wires in four different routes.

Superintendent of City Police Raju Nath Pandey said that representatives of the companies had been cooperating well with the metropolis as expected. In an effort not to cause inconvenience to the people in case of service disruption, they have been active in the field. They have been working together to ensure that people are not deprived of internet services during the removal of tangled wires, he added.

According to the metropolis, the service providers will first identity and mark important wires and after that unwanted wires are removed. It informed that 53 fire incidents took place last year due to unsystematic wiring and the proper management of wires is expected to reduce probable accidents in the future.

The KMC had earlier issued a public notice on May 24 giving 15-day time to remove the unnecessary wires on the electric poles.