Local bodies losing inland revenue

Gaighat, February 22

As the ban on extraction and sale of river products from the Chure region persists, local bodies of Udayapur have incurred loss of millions of rupees in revenue.

The local bodies have been facing budget deficit due to the ban from the start of this fiscal.

Udayapur District Development Committee, Beltar-Basaha Municipality, Katari Municipality and Rampur VDC are highly dependent on revenue collection as it is their major source of income.

“Earlier, extraction and sale of river products such as sand, gravel and boulders from the local rivers covered a major share of the revenue, but ever since the ban has been in place, we’ve lost that income source,” said Local Development Officer Pitambar Adhikari.

Udayapur DDC had collected Rs 3.5 million in revenue from contracts awarded for mining of river products in Triyuga , Baruwakhola and Luharkhola last year.

“In the last fiscal, the ban had been lifted after a team from the centre studied the condition of the rivers.

This year, however, the chance of the ban being lifted is minimal as there is no monitoring,” said Bhupadhwoj Rayamajhi, a non-gazetted first class officer at the DDC.

He added that the committee was obliged to halt many projects to be run by internal sources due to lack of fund.

Meanwhile, the prohibition on extraction of river products has proved a bane for construction entrepreneurs in the district as they are compelled to fetch river products from faraway places.

“As we’re not allowed to extract products from local rivers, we’re continuing the construction work by bringing materials from other districts,” said contractor Hari Karki, who is the contractor of the under-construction concrete bridge over Dware Khola in Beltar.

“The existing ban has not only caused great hassles but also increased our cost,” said Karki, adding that he had to buy 22 new tippers just to ferry river products from other places.