Bhaktapur, March 19:

Locals of Tathali VDC in Bhaktapur have been deprived of telephone services for over a year due to theft of telephone cables.

More than 200 telephone lines in Tathali have not been working since last year due to the theft of telephone cables by an unidentified group. Not only Tathali, neighbouring villages like Chittapol, Sudal, lower parts of Nagarkot, Gundu, Dubakot and Changu are also affected due to theft of cables.

Locals of Tathali complained that the telecom office did not pay heed to their repeated requests to address the problem. They accused the officials of Nepal Telecom (NT), Bhaktapur, of not being serious about addressing their problems. “Though the officials assure us of fixing the cables every time we meet them, they have not done anything yet,” said a local. Ram Khadka, a resident of Tathali, said, “Despite our several visits to NT, the telephone lines have not been fixed yet.”

He also said that the NT had not provided them with Sky phone and CDMA phone even though they had assured the locals of alternatives long time ago.

He said that their everyday activities were badly hampered due to the lack of telephone service.

However, Laxmi Prajapati, chief of NT, Bhaktapur branch, said that the rampant stealing of telephone cables on the outskirts of Bhaktapur made it very difficult for them to reinstall new telephone cables due to the lack of cables and sufficient budget.

According to Prajapati, the NT office had already managed a room on rent in the village to set up an a telephone exchange machine that can support around 500 telephone lines just by changing the original telephone numbers.

He also claimed that the NT had already provided sky phones to 90 per cent of the households in the area as mobile phone service was practically dead in the area due to bad network. He also assured to resume the telephone services by the end of next month if the theft is controlled.