Ministry falls victim to load shedding

LALITPUR: Extended hours of power cut has hit regular business at the Ministry of Local Development, which lacks a generator. Except Monday, the ministry receives electricity for only two hours of office time.

The MoLD consists of four divisions, a financial commission and 12 sections. Among 127 staffers in the central office of the ministry, there are two secretaries, five joint-secretaries, 18 under-secretaries and 20 officers, among others.

“Everything has been affected by the load-shedding,” said Shova Khar Regmi, an officer at the ministry. “Most of the time we have no work and spend hours at the sunny yard.” He said only a few sections had inverters for power back up. “The power was supplied only at 3 pm today. It’s hard to pass time doing nothing,” he told this daily.

The ministry is located at

Harihar Bhavan in Lalitpur while most others are in Singhadurbar, which is a well-facilitated

government secretariat.

Neither there is any generator nor backup installed in most rooms in the ministry. The computer in the office of Dinesh Kumar Thapaliya, ministry spokesperson, is without power back up too. Thapaliya was to provide a software file to this scribe but he could not do so due to the outage.

The area in which the ministry is located falls in the seventh group of power supply schedule of the Nepal Electricity Authority, which cuts supply for 11 hours a day in two shifts of six and five hours. The time mostly falls in the office hour.

“We feel disabled not to be able to work on a computer. Power cut has hampered our performance,” they said. Officer Mohan Marasini rushed to switch on his computer as soon as he the indicator blinked. “I must finish all the works in two hours,” he quipped.

Ramesh Aryal, officer at the Monitoring Division, said it was being hard to work continually. Regmi said the ministry had no budget for bying a generator.