The major enhancement projects at Tribhuvan International Airport are currently not being able to excel forward due to the ongoing problem of alleged budget deficiency. The Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) has been unable to conduct board meeting for the allocation of budget to initiate various major projects at TIA.
Some major projects at TIA that are unable to start due to lack of budgets are Runway Rehabilitation, construction of new heliport, parallel taxiway and vertical expansion of international terminal building. The last board meeting was conducted on 4th September this year but the budget approval could not happen accordingly.
CAAN’s spokesperson Birendra Prasad Shrestha said that the budget approval for the above projects must have been finalized by the mid of July this year but it could not happen as expected. The board meeting to address the issues could probably happen by this week, he added.
Four months of new fiscal year have already been passed but the budget is yet to be finalized. At present, CAAN’s financial management is running in a haphazard fashion. Even CAAN is having harsh time to dispatch salaries to its employees which is really a pitiful situation being one of the huge and responsible organization.
Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation (MoCTCA) has not shown any concern towards conducting board meeting. Honorable Minister Jitendra Narayan Dev is currently busy on election promotion due to which he has not shown any interest on calling authorities for the board meeting.
TIA is desperately in need of runway rehabilitation because airline operators are facing problem in operating their aircraft smoothly. Frequent ruptures and cracks developed on the runway and taxiways at TIA have been proving hazardous for the aircraft. Besides, the airline operators and passengers are experiencing hefty flight delays these days. Parking congestion is always a huge problem at TIA for which expansion of apron is mandatory.
So, the question here is who is to be responsible for all the setbacks? Every respective authority must act urgently and wisely to find out the possible ways of initiating projects that are highly mandatory for air transport capacity of the only international airport of the country.
