Bhaktapur has set an example when it comes to the preservation of historic heritage, providing quality education and producing skilled manpower and experts.
Rameswor Bohora: Centre for Investigative Journalism-Nepal
Mayor of Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) Bidya Sundar Shakya came under boiling water when he instructed the reconstruction of the historic Rani Pokhari by using concrete to give it a modern look. The decision to restore the pond having archeological importance by using concrete was widely criticized. However, even though the disparagement did not really matter Mayor Shakya and other KMC representatives, the issue was of a great significance for Bhaktapur Mayor, Sunil Prajapati.
Tourists in Bhaktapur Durbar
Disappointed with the government’s decision to handover the reconstruction of Rani Pokhari to Nepal Army, Prajapati convened a ‘crucial’ meeting of the five mayors — Kathmandu Mayor Shakya, Lalitpur Mayor Chiribabu Maharjan, Kirtipur Mayor Ramesh Maharjan, and Bhaktapur Mayor Madan Sunder Shrestha — on July 29, 2018, in Bhaktapur.
The meeting decided to set an example by reconstructing the heritages of Kathmandu Valley on the basis of a community-led initiative, and peoples’ active participation.
The meeting also decided to reconstruct the heritage of Kathmandu Valley ensuring the semblance using the past techniques and materials, and in the original traditional style. In fact, they vowed to work unitedly towards developing Kathmandu Valley as a cultural city by emphasizing on holding inter-metropolitan culture among the metropolis.
Says Mayor Prajapati, “I took the initiatives to convene the meeting to ensure that the heritages having tradition, cultural and archaeological importance should not be given on contract but should be built through public participation.”
The meeting was so intense and impressive that the Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) decided to rebuild the Ranipokhari pond through Kastamandap Reconstruction Consumers’ Committee. However, when it was later decided that the Ranipokhari would be reconstructed through the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA), Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of NRA Sushil Gyawali visited Bhaktapur to examine and explore the work carried out by the Bhaktapur Municipality in the protection and conservation of the historic heritage and ponds. Currently, a total of 50 workers from Bhaktapur have been engaged in the reconstruction of the Ranipokhari as per the recommendation of CEO Gyawali.
Bhaktapur Mayor Prajapati’s initiative has, in fact, averted the fear of losing the historic and archaeological attraction of Kastamandap and Ranipokhari since the process of reconstruction of both these sites has been carried out as per their previous semblance.
Says Gyawali, “Impressed with Bhaktapur’s nature of work, we decided to seek their support to reconstruct Kastamandap and Rani Pokhari.” In fact, Bhaktapur has been meticulously moving ahead on the path of transforming itself into a cultural city by promoting, conserving and preserving the heritage sites through cultural, historical, archeological and artistic knowledge and know-how. Even a visitor feels that this city has preserved its cultural and historic values. The Bhaktapur Municipality has been taking the initiatives to reconstruct the heritage and historic sites by keeping their traditional approach intact, destroyed by the 2015 devastating earthquake.
Commendably, Bhaktapur Municipality even refunded a foreign aid of Rs. one billion, that it received from the German government for the reconstruction of the 10 heritage sites destroyed by the devastating 2015 earthquakes in favor of raising funds from local communities. Earlier, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between the Bhaktapur Municipality and the German government for the same. The reason was simple: The Bhaktapur Municipality claimed that the reconstruction under foreign assistance would lack a traditional outlook.
It then started to reconstruct the sites on its own initiatives with the idea of making the city a cultural hub by preserving its beauty. With this initiation, the Bhaktapur City is sure to get back its historic and traditional look, including the often encroached upon ponds and other lands. The standard has been strictly imposed and implemented while reconstructing the damaged houses, including the private ones in their architectural style. The municipality provides aid to the owner of the houses built on a traditional style to maintain the traditional culture, art and craft, and custom. It has already prohibited blacktopping of the narrow inner roads. Instead, they have placed rocks instead of bricks to look clean and tidy.
Once an agricultural hub of the Kathmandu Valley, Bhaktapur now has been mostly turned into a city of concrete with reduced cultivable lands due to rampant land plotting. With the decline in agricultural lands, locals of Bhaktapur have started to learn new skills to become competent in building houses such as technicians, construction workers, carpenters, masons, etc. The workers of Bhaktapur have been engaged in preserving the pride, heritage and cultural values of this historic and cultural city.
In fact, the Bhaktapur Municipality has remained religiously, ethnically and culturally active by maintaining and preserving its culture, custom, art and craft, and heritage since the Panchayat era. Says Mayor Prajapati, “In fact, we could produce a new generation of skilled workers and technicians on the basis of our foundation that we already had.” He added that the Bhaktapur Municipality has been providing skill training on a regular basis based on their traditional know-how to ensure smooth handover of the skill to the younger generation.
Women carving patterns in Kaligad door those were trained from Wooden craft training operated by Bhaktapur municipality.
The Bhaktapur Municipality has also continuous produced skilled construction manpower in recent times. It has also been running its own engineering college and a technical institute to provide traditional knowledge and to produce skilled manpower. The manpower that Bhaktapur has produced have even traveled to other cities such as Butwal, Palpa, Dolakha, and Pokhara to utilize their skills, mainly to construct temples and traditional sites. CEO Gyawali says, “Previously, our expertise of traditional style was limited to temples only. Now, Bhaktapur has contributed a lot to produce manpower and experts equipped with rich, traditional expertise and knowledge.”
Bhaktapur boasts of having more than 1,700 skilled construction workers and around 1,800 engineers, who have had the expertise and know-how about traditional knowledge and heritage. Likewise, Bhaktapur has around two thousand skilled carpenters. If the data provided by Chairman of Bhaktapur Sikarmi Sangh, Bikram Dhokochhu is to be considered, around eight thousand people are actively involved in wooden craft business in the district. “Other districts outside Bhaktapur hire skilled workers and craftsmen from Bhaktapur for the construction of temples and other traditional structures,” Dhokochhu says adding that hotel entrepreneurs of Pokhara invite skilled workers from Bhaktapur to make traditional craft items in the hotels that depict traditional look.
Prosperity through preservation
Bhaktapur Municipality has introduced a policy to engage people, mainly youths, by providing self-sustainable expertise and skills to discourage them from flying abroad for overseas employment. This has, in fact, become an attractive initiative since a carpenter or a construction worker from Bhaktapur earns Rs 1,500 per day, which is Rs 45,000 per month. The municipality has fixed Rs. one thousand as daily wage for a low-wage worker. They charge more than this amount when they go to work in other districts.
What is more encouraging is Bhaktapur Municipality’s efforts to develop Bhaktapur as a cultural city with an objective to convert it as a tourist destination and thereby generating income source, which has proved to be a promising one. The credit goes to former Mayor Gyan Bahadur Naichai, who was elected in 1992 as Bhaktapur’s mayor, and who introduced the system of charging US$1 as entry fee per every foreign tourist coming to Bhaktapur. This decision proved to be a base in Bhaktapur’s development. Last year, Bhaktapur collected a total of Rs 24 crore from the tourist entry fee, which has become the municipality’s major internal income source. It has set a target of collecting Rs. 280 million this year from entry fee only. In fact, around Rs. 245 million has already been collected so far in the last 10 months.
The income generated from tourism sector has converted Bhaktapur into a self-reliant city because of which it does not need any external aid or financial support from the federal government or from donors. “The traditional art and heritage have become the major attraction for tourists,” says Mayor Prajapati adding, “Therefore, we work day and night to preserve these assets to ensure prosperity.”
Architect Milan Bagale, who has been writing on traditional knowledge, unique style, and heritage, says Bhaktapur, in fact, has been a model in preserving traditional heritage. “Bhaktapur produces skill manpower, including engineers, carpenters, masons, and workers, among others.”
While others, including Kathmandu and Bhaktapur, raise slogans of preserving heritages, Bhaktapur is leading the way of proving itself by implementing its words into action by making a long-term plan.
Now that Kathmandu and other municipalities, too, have initiated action-oriented plans and projects towards preserving the culture and traditional assets of archaeological importance. Bhaktapur has generously extended its helping hands to other municipalities for this purpose. For instance, Lalitpur sub-metropolitan city formally sought support from Bhaktapur Municipality to support in preserving the ponds in Lalitpur. “Lalitpur folks say they lack experience, therefore, they have sought our support,” says Mayor Prajapati adding, “Our ancestors have left us these heritages and culture to preserve them. Now it’s our duty to preserve them, make them known to the world. We have assured Lalitpur sub-metropolitan city of our support in any way we can since we have produced our own technicians, engineers, and expertise. In fact, we have encouraged them to go ahead.”
Noble approach
Most importantly, not a single service seeker in Bhaktapur has complained of dilly-dallying in any official work in the Bhaktapur Municipality. Neither have they complained of offering a bribe to accomplish an official task. Service seekers have been provided hassle-free services. The municipality has given the rights to the ward offices on the basis of the service seekers’ demands and necessities.
The municipality has been dispatching a team of nurses and health volunteers to all 10 wards as per its ‘health at every door’ policy to provide health service to the people. The teams examine the patients and also keep their eye on the people and the community to control and making people aware of dreadful diseases and their consequences. They even visit people’s houses, advice them to come to health centers, and collect the data of the sick people and the diseases.
The municipality has been conducting its own people’s health service centers at Chyamasingh, Paanchtalay Mandir (Bhagawatisthan), and Byaasi where specialists and health workers provide health services at a minimal rate to the people. The municipality, which has also launched Ayurvedic health service from July 16, 2017, has been providing Rs 10 thousand each to patients of cancer, kidney transplant, heart surgery, and mental illness. It has also initiated the process to establish a 25-bed Khwopa Hospital on its own expense within this year. It has also been operating child care centers in six different places of the municipality.
The municipality has also been running Khwopa High School, Khwopa College, Khwopa Engineering College, Khwopa College of Engineering, Khwopa Multi-Technical Study Center, Sharada High School and Sharada College on its own investment. A total of 5,600 students are currently studying in these institutions.
The Bhaktapur Municipality has been running Plus Two programs at the Khwopa High School after getting permission for the same in 1999. The Khwopa Engineering College, affiliated to Purbanchal University since 2001, has been conducting programs such as Bachelors in Civil Engineering, BE Computers, Electronics and Communication and Architecture, Masters in Economicquack Engineering and Urban Design and Conservation. Likewise, the Khwopa College of Engineering, which has its affiliation with the Tribhuvan University (TU) has programs such as Bachelors in Civil Engineering, Electrical, and Computer Engineering.
Likewise, Khwopa Multi-Technical Study Center, established in 1999, has been providing technical education such as nursing, and civil engineering under the CTEVT. According to the data available at the municipality, students from 76 districts, except Manang, study in this institution. The Bhaktapur Municipality, which has a total hold of the Nepal Majdoor Kisan Party, has been widely appreciated for carrying out such programs. Now the municipality has added another feather to its cap by initiating programs and campaigns towards prosperity by preserving its historic and cultural heritage.
