There is an estimated 4 million living in the Valley. Once
the vacation for Dashain--the ten days festival starts on Oct 16, thousands of
people living in the Valley will start rushing to their ancestral homes by air,
public buses and private vehicles to different parts of the country for
celebrating the festival with beloved family members and relatives.
“Busy markets like Newroad and Ason remain almost vacant in
Dashain holidays,” said Dhruba Man Dangol, 67, Jaisidewal, Kathmandu ,
who is a native of Kathmandu . He said that the rented
rooms, houses and shops owned by people outside the Valley also get closed and
busy Valley roads too looks clear.
Normally, over 1,500 public vehicles—buses, microbuses and
sumo leave the Valley each day from Nagdhunga, the major exist from the Valley.
During the Dashain rush, around 3,500 vehicles including taxies is expected to
leave from Banepa-Dhulikhel, Trishuli-Nuwakot and Nagdhunga-Naubise routes this
year, according to Punya Prasad Sitaula, treasurer of Federation of Nepalese
National Transport Entrepreneurs. Many people also travel by their personal
vehicles and those who can offer the expensive air service leave for their
homes by plane.
With the huge mass leaving the Valley and majority of
vehicles going out, Dashain is also the time when one does not have to face
traffic congestion like in normal days and pollution level also goes down for
low vehicle movement. Sociologist said that the Valley’s population had
increased rapidly during last one decade for multiple reasons including a
decade long armed conflict, availability of better education, health services,
better business scope and migration for job opportunities.
“Almost half of total population who are not settled
completely with all family members in Kathmandu leave
for Dashain celebration,” said Ganesh Gurung, a sociologists and foreign
employment expert. He also said that with the Dashain falling in the tourist
season and migrant workers returning home for festivals also send demand for
transport services up increasing vehicular movement nationwide.
Surface transport being a cheaper medium and reaching almost
all districts of the country, customers’ demand rises each year during Dashain.
But, it is hard for customers to get ticket easily for limited public vehicles
and hoarding by transporters to sell tickets in black. Once the ticket booking
opens customers’ thong counters across the Valley for tickets. But, customers’
experience tells that they do not get tickets easily as transporters tend to
hoard ticket and sell in black later.
“I received ticket only after third attempt with the support
of my uncle’s friend,” said Sagun Raut, a student living in Kathmandu
for last three years. He is originally from Budhabare, Jhapa. He said that lack
of competition in transport sector and government’s negligence to regulate the
transport sector effectively had created this type of problem each year in
Dashain.
In a recent inspect visit of the Department of Transport
Management, monitoring team had found a ticket counter in Sundhara hoarding 36
tickets. It clearly shows that how transporters are involved in wrongdoing.
“We have been checking on ticket counters time to time based
on compliant received,” said Chanra Prasad Phuyal, director at the department.
He said that they would soon start monitoring the buses leaving the Valley in
coordination with traffic police to check ill practice such as overloading and
collection of higher transport fare and to help minimize the road accident.
With the alarming series of road accidents this year, this
is also the time when the government has to come up with effective measures to
avert accidents during high movement of vehicles across the country during
Dashain. Transport workers said that as drivers are generally forced to work
for long hours based on the increased movement of customers, the chances of
accidents go up.
“Tired driver is one of the major reasons of road
accidents,” said Ajay Rai, president of Nepal Yatayat Majdor Sangh. He said
even though the government provision limits driving duty to six hour, drivers
are working more than eight hours and provision of two drivers in night buses
was not implemented effectively.
With the festival nearing, transporters and air service
operators are busy in receiving ticket booking for different destinations of
the country in advance. This is the major season for doing business for
airlines and transport entrepreneurs. Airlines operate extra flights and
transport entrepreneurs add vehicles to their fleets by buying new vehicles or
even by maintenance of old vehicles which create risk of road accidents.
“We have heard of operating old buses during festivals but
we do not have system to check if the vehicle on the road is old or new,” said
an official at the department of. He said that they have been planning
monitoring mechanism targeting Dashain movement and all offices of 13 zones in
coordination with traffic police would carry out inspection to make road
transport safe and reliable.
With the increased complaints from customers of not getting
tickets, the government has also set up 12 help desks in different parts of the
Valley for the assistance of customers. Bus entrepreneurs have said that tickets
mainly for eastern parts of the country were almost sold out. For the
increasing demand, airlines and bus operators have already started increasing
their service capacity.
Major transport service companies like Miteri and Makalu
have already decided to add news vehicles to their fleets. An estimated 500 to
1,000 vehicles will be added depending up on the demand, according to the
transporters federation. Being Dashain movement the major one, transporters do
business of estimated Rs 3 billion during this period.
As for the air service, normally private airlines produce
more than 600 seats on the Kathmandu-Biratnagar sector daily. Airlines said
that daily seat demand for the eastern region almost triples during Dashain.
Airlines companies have already reported that tickets on flights from Kathmandu
to Bhadrapur, Biratnagar and Tumlingtar have been sold out about two weeks ago.
There is unprecedented occupancy on the Biratnagar and
Bhadrapur sectors, according to Buddha Air. With the tickets on the Kathmandu-Bhadrapur
sector being sold out, Buddha Air had added an extra flight for Bhadrapur and
plans to increase for Biratnagar soon. While reservations on other routes
Bhairahawa, Nepalgunj and Dhangadhi is also reported to be almost packed for
the festival.
State-owned Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) that mainly
flies to remote destinations is receiving ticket bookings for Dashain. Based on
demand, NAC has already decided to add 30 flights from Oct 13-24 to cater to
the increased demand during the festive rush. With its two aircraft, NAC has a
total of 78 scheduled flights to its 25 destinations and bearing in mind the
festival it will make a total of 108 flights.
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