Kathmandu, February 12

The government has put a ban on converting private vehicles to public vehicles or vice-versa in a bid to make its move to scrap public vehicles more than 20 years more effective.

According to Director at the Department of Transport Management Tulsi Ram Aryal, the department introduced the rule, after it was found that people started converting private vehicles into public and public into private.

The government earlier decided to scrap all public transport vehicles by March 15, from across the country. Such vehicles were banned in Kathmandu Valley last year.

Director Aryal said they had put a ban on converting vehicle type after they found a hike in the number of owners applying for conversion of their vehicle type in the last two weeks. “We had to bring new law, after we found that public vehicles were converted into private and used as school buses and for other purposes, especially in remote areas.”

On 14 March 2016, the Cabinet had decided to remove old public vehicles as per the five-year strategic plan proposed by the Physical Infrastructure and Transportation Ministry by 14 March, 2018.  The new rule was supposed to ban 2,500 public vehicles across the country. Director Aryal also said if there had been a law to ban all 20-year-old vehicles, they would not have faced such difficulties. “The ‘Motor Vehicle and Transportation Rule 1997’ does not allow decisions on private vehicles,” said Tulsi Ram Aryal.

The department has put the ban in place to control pollution and manage traffic.