More than two dozen street lamps along the Singha Durbar-Putalisadak road section in the Capital do not light up at night.

Umesh Manandhar, who runs a shop in the area, says these street lamps have not worked for the past 10 years, and the authorities concerned have made no efforts whatsoever to fix them.

“The country’s prime minister works beyond the gated fence, but outside, not a single lamp lights up the street,” said Manandhar, who walks home with an aid of a torch light after closing his shop every night.

In 2016, the Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) reached an agreement with BK Traders and Suppliers on installing 1,285 solar-powered street lamps in different parts of Kathmandu. Soon enough new steet lamps were put up along the major streets of the city, but the Singha Durbar-Putalisadak stretch was not among them.

Two years prior to that old street lights at several areas inside Kathmandu Valley were replaced for the 2014 South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation Summit. Then, too, the Singha Durbar-Putalisadak road was ignored.

Residents of the area say they have made several requests to the KMC as well as the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) to repair the street lamps, but to no avail.

“None of the street lamps on the southern side of Singha Durbar are functional,” said Rajkumar Wagle, a traffic police constable.

When the Post inqured Nama Raj Dhakal, joint spokesperson at the KMC, about the matter, he said that the metropolis was unaware of the problem.

“We did not know about this. The metropolis immediately will look into the problem,” he said.