The government plans to refurbish more than half of the vehicles laying abandoned inside Singha Durbar.

Out of more than 130 out-of-commission vehicles parked on the Singha Durbar premises, a great great many of them could be fixed and put to use, said Dilli Ghimire, under secretary at the Prime Minister’s Office.  

The repaired vehicles could be used by ministries, government agencies and local units as required, he added.    

On September 2018, the PMO had formed a committee to manage the Singha Durbar premises. The first meeting of the committee on October 4 had set up a panel, led by Amar Bahadur Thapa, senior divisional engineer at the Ministry of Urban Development, to find ways to manage the abandoned vehicles inside the country’s administrative centre.

According to the PMO officials, a recent meeting of the government secretaries decided that the government would send the vehicles that can be used again to some ministries and local units, considering that many of them have been demanding for vehicles to run their daily operations.

The 62 vehicles that have been identified to be beyond repair will be sent to the Council for Technical Education and Vocational Training, instead of selling them for their scrap parts.

The CTEVT could use the vehicles for various experiments, officials said.

According to Ghimire, the government has set the target of bringing the vehicles that are reusable into operation by mid-January, while making necessary management of the vehicles that cannot be reused by mid-February.

Despite owning so many vehicles that can be re-used, the government still continues to spend billions to purchase a large number of vehicles. According to the Financial Comptroller General Office, the government spent a total of Rs6.61 billion in purchasing new vehicles in the last fiscal year 2017-18.