INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
KOHALPUR, OCTOBER 20People heading home to celebrate Dashain, Tihar and Chhath festivals have been stranded at the
Nepalgunj Airport in Banke district due to the shortage of air tickets
The stranded people have left various districts of the country for Karnali and Sudurpaschim Provinces to observe the festivals
People throng New Bus Park to go home for Dashain festival
Special security plan in place for festivals
Dhananjaya Jethara, who was spotted in Nepalgunj, complained that he has been stranded for five days after he could not get an air ticket
According to him, he worked as a school teacher in Bhojpur district and headed to his home to celebrate Dashain, but he was forced to stay
in a hotel paying a large sum of money for want of a ticket."I every morning visited the ticket counter of the Nepal Airlines Corporation
for air ticket, but returned empty handed," he said.
As travelling by land is considered 'unsafe', people from remote hilly
districts often opt to travel by air
Passengers have been dealing with problems due to irregular flights
Without access to the road network, people of Dolpa and Humla, Jumla, Mugu and Bajura districts have been suffering due to the lack of air
tickets, complained the passengers.Sangita Bista of Kolti in Bajura district complained that she is worried about how to go home to
celebrate Dashain due to the shortage of tickets.She accused the NAC of distributing tickets to those with access to power, thus depriving
general passengers of tickets
"There are 17 seats in one flight
Only seven seats are allocated for general people
The remaining tickets are distributed to those with access to power," she complained.The problem has worsened due to the fact that the NAC
flights are very few in number, and private airlines prioritise charter flights over regular flights, said Jethara
The pressure of passengers is high during Dashain, but the lack of enough flights has added problems, he said.Private airlines do not
operate regularly and only those who have access to the NAC which has added problems for passengers to get tickets, said Krishna Bahadur
Singh of Humla district.The NAC has added flights for Dashain to eight flights a week from three
The flights have been added due to the pressure of passengers, said Man Bahadur Chaudhary, station chief of the Nepalgunj regional office of
the NAC."Earlier, there were flights only three days a week
Now, the flights have been added for eight days and it has been made regular," he said.Saying that efforts were underway to provide
convenient services to the passengers, Chaudhary claimed that tickets were being distributed to the sick, children and elderly people on a
Increasing number of passengers was the cause of passengers not getting tickets, he said.
This article first appeared/also appeared in https://thehimalayantimes.com