23 drinking water projects halted because of budget strain

By Amar Raj Naharki, Tanahun, April 16: A total of 23 drinking water projects in Tanahun and Nawalpur districts have remained incomplete due to a shortage of budget and a government circular restricting the implementation of low budget schemes.

These important projects, overseen by the Drinking Water and Sanitation Division Office, Tanahun, have been halted midway as funds have not been released.

According to Senior Division Engineer Shambhu Raj Khanal, chief of the office, 14 projects in Tanahun and nine in Nawalpur are facing budget constraints. All of them are ongoing multi-year projects.

Although budgets had initially been allocated for these schemes, their implementation has not moved forward recently because of a lack of available funds.

“Following the ‘Gen Z’ movement in September last year, the government issued a circular instructing offices not to immediately implement projects with lower budgets due to the financial crunch,” Khanal said. “As a result, projects that had reached the final stage and required payment have been directly affected.”

He said each of the affected projects requires payments ranging from Rs 1 million to Rs 3 million. In total, the office estimates that around Rs 50 million is still needed to complete all the schemes.

The suspension of work due to budget shortages has created a situation in which consumers are being deprived of access to clean drinking water.

Meanwhile, the office has provided Rs 5.8 million in electricity tariff subsidies to various lift drinking water projects in Tanahun and Nawalpur.

A total of 111 projects have received the subsidy in the current fiscal year.

According to Khanal, the grants were distributed to consumer committees under the Lift Drinking Water Project Electricity Tariff Subsidy Standards, 2079, ranging from 100 percent to 10 percent based on electricity consumption.