| threeinvestigators |
Posted
on 04-Oct-01 09:10 AM
Isn't this so typical of Nepal and Nepali society. Everybody pointing fingers, nobody willing to shoulder the responsibility, all passing the buck, and the innocent people are put in grave danger. I wonder why the government does not impose immediate ban on tempos until they pass the safety test.
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Gas tempos still remain ‘unsafe’
By Birodh Pandey
KATHMANDU, Oct 3 – Lives of thousands of commuters travelling in the capital’s cooking-gas-run vehicles continue to remain at stake as a government body responsible for managing transportation sector fails to make the manufacturers and operators of the gas-run vehicles abide by the government rules and regulations.
The government officials and the Gas Vehicle Association (GVA), shying away from their responsibility, have blamed the Kathmandu Tuk Tuk, the manufacturer of gas-run three-wheelers, which number around 500 in the Valley. According to them, it is denying a simple instrument called "refueling valve" to the operators, which is why the gas-run three wheelers continue to remain "unsafe for travelling".
As the refueling valves are not fixed in the fuel supplying mechanism of the three-wheelers, experts say, "there remains the possibility of the gas cylinders installed in such vehicles exploding anytime, anywhere."
"The refueling valve is an essential instrument which is necessary to replace the present tanks used by the gas tempos with the proper safe liquid petroleum gas (LPG) tanks," says Basanta Nakarmi, an automobile engineer at the Surya Auto Mechanical Workshop and in charge of a gas refueling station.
The Department of Transport Management had ordered the operators of LPG-run vehicles to install genuine gas kits which also includes the refueling valve recently. However, few have followed the government directives. Deputy Director General of the Transport Management Office, Sushil Agrawal, who issued the directives, now passes the buck on operators’ association and the sole manufacturer, the Kathmandu Tuk Tuk.
"The remedy to the problem is that the responsibility of delivering and subsequently installing the refueling valve should be borne by the association and manufacturer themselves and not by the government," he said, when asked what was the government doing to ensure safety of the gas-run three-wheelers.
Birendra Raya, a mechanical engineer at the Kathmandu Tuk Tuk, said that the newly installed refueling system is based on Italian technology. "The government should have permitted to operate Japanese technology-based refueling stations, as the tempos running in the Valley are equipped with Japanese engines and so we have the refueling valves only compatible with Japanese technology."
Gas-tempos entrepreneurs started replacing the gas tempos with proper LPG tanks after the Nepal Bureau of Standards & Metrology (NBSM) notified the entrepreneurs to immediately stop using the domestic cylinders citing various safety reasons.
"We are ready to install the LPG tank as required by the government and the general public. But the manufacturing company has been delaying the supply of refueling valves stating various reasons," said Chiranjibi Maskey, the President of GVA.
"However, we have just received a promising letter from the Tuk Tuk that they will replace the domestic cylinders with the LPG ones (with proper refueling valves) by October 22," he added.
According to the GVA chief, the association desperately wants to replace the domestic cylinders as the pressure is mounting from every side.
"We are now exploring the possibility of importing the instrument from Thailand," said Birendra Raya of the Kathmandu Tuk Tuk.
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