Chitwan, October 15
After mounting complaints that the Bharatpur Airport premises are in shambles, the district administration inspected the site and warned the responsible office.
The inspection followed complaints that the toilets inside the airport premises smelled foul, that regular cleaning was not being done and that no work had been undertaken to give the premises a proper appearance.
Members of the public had raised the complaints with Sobita Gautam, Minister for Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs, who is also the House of Representatives member elected from Chitwan Constituency 3.
She drew the attention of Chief District Officer Ganesh Aryal to the matter.
According to Aryal, after complaints came in from the minister and others, he and his colleagues inspected the airport premises together with Minister Gautam.
CDO Aryal said that, with weaknesses in cleaning and management evident in line with the complaints, airport office chief Deepak BK was told to make improvements immediately.
“The airport premises need to be improved. We inspected it together with the minister. A commitment to improve it has been secured,” he said.
He said they found a complex set of problems involving the overall infrastructure, cleanliness and the difficulty of finding office staff.
Problems with parking and other matters at the airport premises had also arisen repeatedly before. According to CDO Aryal, BK had not attended any of the meetings of office chiefs held in the 15 months since he came to Chitwan, so it had not been possible to learn about the problems there and fix them earlier. He said that after a flood of complaints, he and others went with the minister and instructed that improvements be made.
Buddha Air operates seven daily flights from here to Kathmandu, carrying nearly 800 passengers. There had also been repeated complaints earlier that the smell from the toilet in the waiting room after boarding spreads outside.
Office chief BK acknowledged some shortcomings and said he had pledged to fix them. He said work was underway after the inspection. He said that when the road is blocked, passenger numbers surge, which has made it impossible to give the premises proper attention.
-RSS
