Dirty business

During the day the Balaju-Banasthali stretch of the Ring Road is congested because of traffic jams. At night the situation is worse because of the piles of mud in the middle of the road. In the last three months there have been a number of accidents because cars skidded on the slippery mud. The mud is being brought in from a housing complex being built in Sitapaila and Hotel Annapurna. In spite of the locals requesting the vehicles responsible for the mud to dump it on the green belt at the road side, they are still dumping mud in the middle.

The secretary of the Ward 16 office, Gobinda Acharya, is helpless. He says: "No one adheres to the orders that the ward office gives. This is really unfortunate." The ward office has not been able to do anything about this situation for the last three months. Banasthali police in-charge Min Bahadur Khadka said that the police cannot interfere because it is not in their directives. "When the number of accidents increased, locals started working as vigilantes and the situation has been more under control since then," says Khadka.

General Manager of the Roads Department Tulsi Sitaula says that the department is responsible for monitoring encroachment on the ring road but because of limited manpower they haven't been able to do their work properly. He says that his department is aware of mud being piled up on the Balaju-Banasthali stretch. "They pile the mud between 12 and 3AM so it is extremely difficult to catch those responsible," Sitaula says. He gave his assurance that the mud piles would be removed within the next two days. "But it is more important to find the culprits who are responsible. We have already started an investigation and hope to find those responsible in a week or so."