The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has formed a panel to resurrect hundreds of unused vehicles dumped at Singha Durbar, Nepal’s main administrative hub.

Ministry of Urban Development Senior Divisional Engineer Amar Bahadur Thapa leads the panel that will inspect all unused vehicles and inform the government how many could be rehabilitated.

The panel includes a mechanical engineer from the Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport and mechanical supervisor of the PMO. PMO Section Officer Jhabindra Pandey is the secretary.

The panel has dispatched letters to all the ministries and other government authorities seeking details of unused vehicles.

“We will study the status of all vehicles at the site along with their concerned technicians as soon as the ministries submit their reports,” said Pandey. 

Repaired vehicles that are in good working condition would be deployed as required, he said. There are 753 local units in the country and most of them have asked for vehicles for their authorities.

PMO Spokesperson Binod Kunwar said, “We will send repaired vehicles to provinces and local levels wherever necessary.”

PMO officials said damaged and non-functional vehicles are an eyesore at Singha Durbar. Many visitors and service-seekers said either vehicles should be scrapped as junk or repaired and redeployed quickly.

On September 16, the PMO had formed Singha Durbar Premises Monitoring Committee (SPMC) for the overall management of main administrative centre.

The first meeting of the committee on October 4 set up Thapa-led panel to assess dumped vehicles inside Singha Durbar. This panel will submit its report to SPMC led by PMO Joint Secretary Binod Kunwar. 

The Thapa-panel on October 26 decided to despatch letters to all the ministries and other departments. The panel will estimate the cost of repairing vehicles. As soon as the sub-panel submits its report, the SPMC will decide on how to manage them. 

Independent observers say government officials have a proclivity to discard vehicles that are in good working condition.

The panel will find out how many such vehicles could be used after repairs and how many could be auctioned as scrap. According to Kunwar, the government had auctioned many such vehicles two years ago.