Caan to lease land to Bed Upreti Trust for the museum
January 25, 2017- Kathmandu
The Bed Upreti Trust, which is building the aircraft museum at Sinamangal, has gotten the land in lease from Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) which has done so without following procedure.
As per a board meeting held on 16th of January, the board decided to let the management lease the property belonging to Caan which is about 9,000 square meters for 10 years.
The Bed Upreti Trust has bought the retired Airbus A330 aircraft of Turkish Airlines that crashed landed at Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) in March, 2015.
The trust had previously built a museum in Dhangadhi which was quite a success and this motivated them to build an aircraft museum in Kathmandu.
As per an official at Caan, the trust and the authority will be signing a memorandum of understanding to lease out the land and also added that Caan has a right to provide its land on lease which is based on the Airport Charges Rules 2067.
While the event has occurred, other government officials have expressed their dissatisfaction stating that public domain organization like Caan has no such legal right to lease or sell land to private groups without the approval of government.
The Tourism Ministry told that Caan has not followed the required stipulation to lease the land to the trust which requires Caan’s approval. The leasing would have also involved other potential parties through an open bidding.
Caan had previously invited bids to operate an advanced parking system at TIA and went to award the contract to a private company in 2009 going against the regulations.
Though, Caan followed the rule to grant the contract through open race, it had not gotten sanction from the government to rent the land and the case went to Finance Ministry which cancelled the plan. Further, the commission took four years to favor the tenancy.
A cost of Rs. 50 million is slated to be invested by the Bed Upreti Trust which has planned to establish the museum within six months which is being built for the education about aviation to general people.
A museum in Dhangadhi is lodged in a retired Fokker aircraft of the currently obsolete Cosmic Air by the trust.
