Kathmandu, Jan. 17: Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) office today organised the second stakeholders’ meeting to finalise the Kathmandu City Development Strategy (KCDS) that aims at developing Kathmandu into a liveable city.

“The strategy aims at making Kathmandu a liveable, bankable and competitive city by ensuring the basic amenities,” KMC’s officer Surya Silwal told the meeting here this afternoon. Silwal said that the strategy envisioned KMC’s autonomy to achieve this goal.

“Once finalised, the strategy will serve as a point of departure to push ahead our development plans,” Mayor Keshav Sthapit said. “We now know where we stand and where we want to reach. Today’s meeting will finalise how we can go ahead.”

Sthapit said that Kathmandu’s development posed difficulties but adding there were opportunities too. “The KMC can capitalise these opportunities provided the government is co-operative and supports its projects,” said Sthapit, adding, “This has not been the case so far.”

Sthapit said that the government had failed to be co-operate with the KMC in its plan to buy electricity in bulk and supply it to the city dwellers. “The KMC’s involvement in electricity supply can play an important role in checking the unplanned settlement as well as to pool resources,” he said. “But the appeal of the Metropolis has gone unheeded.”

The problems of Kathmandu have to be seen in broader perspective, said Harka Gurung commenting on the draft of the strategy and stressed on decentralisation to address the problem of overpopulation and unplanned settlement. He also called for co-ordination between the KMC and other public utility service providers.

Gurung said that the government should discourage the idea of setting up industries in Kathmandu.

“The strategy has nothing radical in it but it can be useful to address the existing problems and develop the city,” he said.

Gurung said that the KMC should be more aggressive to pool enough resources for the development of the city. “The Metropolis office should make sure that the people running businesses in the city pay for the opportunities they are capitalising.”

Deputy Mayor Bidur Mainali said, “My concern is whether the strategy will be implemented at all.” There are a number of studies carried out and reports prepared to develop Kathmandu but they never got implemented, he added.

Mainali appealed to the civil society to be watchful to make sure that the strategy would be implemented.

The KMC has been preparing the city development strategy since July 2000 with the support of the World Bank. The Metropolis office had organised the first stakeholders’ meeting in this connection during the last week of August last year.