Letters
Misleading news
Our attention has been drawn to a news report published by The Kathmandu Post regarding our operations in Helambu (‘Helambu administration says Melamchi project didn’t pay promised tax’, March 31).
Quoting the rural municipality, the paper writes, ‘Sinohydro Corporation Ltd, the Chinese contractor company of the project, has not paid for the resources—slates, stones, soils and other riverbed materials—used while constructing Ambathan dam and other infrastructures in Helambu Rural Municipality Ward No 1.’ Our main objection goes with this sentence of the news.
Sinohydro began completing the uncompleted infrastructures of the Melamchi Water Supply Project after making a formal agreement with the concerned agencies of the Government of Nepal. We have signed the terms and conditions and we assure you that we abide by the clauses mentioned in the agreement. As a construction company, we managed construction materials from different legal sources. Some materials were imported from foreign countries while some of them were purchased locally and also some of them is recycling of discarded bulk rock and soil from the tunnel or dam excavation period.
As mentioned in the news, the company used slates, stones, soil and other riverbed materials in the infrastructure, but all these materials were used under construction for three major purposes. The first one is aggregate used for mixing concrete and backfill work which were legally bought from local vendors and suppliers with fully paid taxes. The second one is backfill stone used for gabion wall work. The last one is the hard stone used for laying weir lining. The latter two were recycled excavated mucking rock heaped up in the construction field rather than the river bed materials.
For the aggregate, the company has paid all the vendors and suppliers for the materials they supplied and we believe that all of the vendors and suppliers are satisfied with the company. The entire bill, invoices, payment receipts, dispatches and all other documents of transactions and payments concerning the local and the foreign vendors and suppliers are transparent, and are kept safely in the company’s office. The news report is misleading, and should be amended.
Sinohydro Corporation Ltd, via email