Kathmandu, September 27:

Owing to the lack of a monitoring mechanism, most of the buildings constructed in the Kathmandu valley for residential purpose are being used for commercial purposes.

According to engineers, around half of the buildings in Kathmandu district are facing many risks because schools and shopping centres are being run in these buildings, which were built for residential purpose.

Surendra Rajkarnikar, senior engineer at the Kathmandu Metropolitan City, said the blueprints of houses used for commercial purpose are registered in individuals’ names. “Blueprints of the houses are registered in the municipality. Besides that, there is no provision of checking for what purposes the houses are being used,” Rajkarnikar told this daily.

There are certain bylaws that help control such activities to some extent, but there are no strict rules and policy to check for which purposes these buildings are being used, he said. “The government should either make the citizens follow the ‘land use map’ and create a new Kathmandu with planned settlements or it should come up with some strict rules that will penalise the house-owners who violate the rules,” he said.

Bishnu Panthee, vice-president of the Society of Nepalese Architects (SONA), said, “The designers make designs of houses, but house-owners rent the buildings to those who pay more,” Panthee said, adding, “This tendency is making the life of residents riskier.”

As owners of big houses are considered great in Nepal, people like to construct big houses and lease them out for commercial purposes without applying measures that can tolerate the pressure of big crowd, he said.

“The government does not have any policy to monitor the violation of the rules during building construction and its use,” he said, adding, “The government should have policies to guide the building construction and their use according to its make up.”

According to the KMC, around 500 houses are registered every year in the city — most of them as residential buildings.