Nearly two months after receiving two broomer machines from the Chinese government, the Kathmandu Metropolitan City has still not been able to operate the machines citing technical difficulties and not having registration number plates from the government.

The Chinese city of Chengdu had handed over two broomer machines to Kathmandu in June, as part of its effort to strengthen the relationship between two sister cities and to keep Kathmandu clean. However, the machines are gathering dust, and no one can say when they will come into operation.

An official at the city office’s Environment Division told the Post on condition of anonymity that the machines have not come into operation, as there’s no one who knows how to operate the machine, and also because the division is unable to identify the chassis number (a serial number that has to be registered to the Department of Transport to take a new number plate.)

“These broomer machines are comparatively bigger and more sophisticated than the Italian broomer machines that are in operation here. However, we have been unable to operate them, as the manuals are written in Chinese,” the official said. “The Chinese government had sent an engineer to teach us how to operate the machine, but we could not understand what he said.”

Although the Chinese engineer had tried to teach Sanat Kumar Maharjan, an engineer of the division, the way to operate the machine, the latter had trouble understanding the instructions because of the language barrier, the official said.

The Motor Vehicles and Transport Management Act 1993 states that all new vehicles should be registered with the Department of Transport Management within 15 days of import.

But in the case of the broomer machines, they are yet to be registered even 50 days after they were brought to the country.

Ishwor Man Dangol, city spokesperson, said the city office will soon get the vehicles registered.

“We needed to pay Rs 500,000 to the department. We could not release the money, as we were at the end of the fiscal year. We are in the process of releasing the budget,” said Dangol.

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