Unsafe roads and unavailability of bus tickets once again mark the beginning of festivities

Kathmandu

Around 6,000 public transport vehicles take two million people out of the valley during the festive season. With Dashain closing in with every passing day the rise in the number of people travelling back to their districts/ homes is exponential. Some travellers have managed to book tickets while many are still left standing in long lines outside the ticket counters helplessly. This is the same old story every year.

Every year during Dashain Nepalis are forced to suffer the same problems with no tickets and no seats available. However, the problem doesn’t end here. A bigger worry for a traveller is his own safety during the journey home. In the last 10 years, 19,000 people have died in road accidents in this corresponding period.

Sold out

Earlier, ticket bookings for public buses and micro buses would start at least a month prior to the festivities. This year the windows opened on September 23, only two weeks before the start of the festival. Reportedly  already all tickets to all destinations are sold out. Complaining about the difficulty she’s facing in acquiring a ticket for herself to travel back home to Jhapa for Dashain, Nisha Olee a student of Atlantic International College said, “It’s the same routine for me every year. I struggle to get tickets for my trip home. This year too I stood in the long queue for an entire day only to be told that there are no tickets available upto October 10. The only option now left is to reserve a taxi home.”

Likewise, Prabesh Kunwar who works in Kathmandu stated, “Pre-booking during the festive season is a long-existing problem. Whenever I plan a trip back to my hometown Kailali, Tikapur I never get a ticket. Somehow in desperation I end up by paying double the ticket price to touts.”

In response to this problem, and to allegedly “crack down” on the black market, the Federation of Nepalese National Transport Entrepreneurs (FNNTE), Department of Transport Management (DoTM), Metropolitan Traffic Police Division (MTPD) have established citizen help desks in 12 points in Kathmandu — New Bus Park, Jorpati, Gaushala, Koteshwor, Satdobato, Swoyambhu, Kalanki, Nagdhunga, Old Bus Park, Sundhara, Balaju and Balkhu.

The help desks have representatives from traffic and civil police, and transport entrepreneurs. “To avoid black marketing of tickets we have established help desks. Necessary action will be taken against perpetrators as soon as people lodge a complaint,” said Basanta Adhikari, Spokesperson for DoTM. The government has also made it compulsory for ticketing clerks to carry ID cards to ensure that passengers are not duped on the pretext of authority.

“FNNTE is a private body and to add buses and micro buses especially for the festive season is not possible”

Bijay Bahadur Swar

Senior Vice President of FNNTE