KATHMANDU: Telephone lines are dead in parts of Lalitpur, causing difficulties to a large number of people. More than 1,000 telephone lines have gone haywire in Jhamsikhel, Sanepa and Dhobighat of the district. “Telephone service has been disrupted since February 13. This has caused difficulties,” say locals, adding that more than 1,000 landline phones are dead.
“With phones not working, we have not been able to access the internet,” Kishor Shrestha, a local of Jhamsikhel-2, says.
All this is due to recklessness and negligence on the part of the Department of Roads, says Shrestha, adding that the department did not bother to take care of telephone lines while laying sewerage pipes. “Workers caused damage to the underground phone lines near the Office of the Superintendent of Police, Jawalakhel, while they were fitting drainage pipes during road expansion,” according to engineer at Nepal Telecom, Harihar Sharma.”It will take a week or so to fix the lines as NT lacks human resources for the same. It is very difficult to fix underground lines on time,” he says. Not only in Lalitpur, landline phone disruption had occurred in other parts of the Kathmandu Valley in course of road expansion. Not long ago, all phone lines went dead for days in Baneshwor as Kathmandu Metropolis and the DoR chose to expand roads haphazardly. Source: HIMALAYAN NEWS SERVICE