Protesting the traffic police’s decision to hike the fine for traffic rules violation, the transport workers on Monday evening took to the streets, leading to clashes, vandalism and arson in the Balaju-Naya Buspark area in Kathmandu. The major demands of the protestors include scrapping of the exorbitant penalty amount, release of the suspended license, provision of the physical infrastructure parking pick and drop and others.
Tensions rose high in the areas after the workers under the banners of different political parties-aligned association staged the protests. Despite the appeals of the Kathmandu Metropolitan City and other organizations to run the vehicles from inside the Naya Buspark to those travelling through the main road along the Naya Buspark and Gongabu Chowk, the entrepreneurs had been staging protests demanding to run the vehicles from the previous route. The buses and micro-buses along the route were plying from the private land plots.
Currently, a Chinese company is working on this route, as part of the second phase of expansion of the Ring Road. The protestors pelted stones at the police and also set two police vans on fire this evening. Likewise, the protestors torched a temporary police beat located at Balaju Chowk, according to the Senior Superintendent of Police Himalaya Kumar Shrestha. It is said that 10 police persons and some protestors sustained injuries in the protest. SSP Shrestha said that vehicular movement along the Balaju-Naya Buspark route has resumed now. —
