The distribution of passports at the district administration office has come to a standstill after Ved Bahadur Thapa, chairman of the rural municipality of Kaligand, broke the scanner of the passport branch.
Because of the token system, the passport service was stopped after Thapa broke the scanner of the administration saying that it was not the time to make the passport of the customer coming from his municipality. Assistant Chief District Officer Hari Prasad Gayre said that Thapa, who reached the administration office for a meeting on disaster management on Thursday, went to the passport branch to find out about the customer who came from his municipality to get a passport and broke the scanner after a dispute. "Because there was a lot of customer traffic today, the tokens were distributed until tomorrow, the chairman broke the scanner when there was a dispute about some customers' turn not coming on time," Gayre said.
President Thapa was detained by the police after breaking the scanner. DSP Shankar Pokharel, Information Officer of the District Police Office, said that Thapa apologized in writing to the police and after agreeing to pay the compensation for the broken machine, he handed it over to his relatives at night.
Since Kaligandaki rural municipality is the farthest municipality in the district, service recipients come to the headquarters only for citizenship, passport and property. Due to the fact that customers come after reserving a vehicle, if the work is not completed on time, a large amount of money is spent, so the service has to be taken on the same day. Municipal Chairman Thapa has admitted to the police that there was a dispute about getting passports for the customers who were waiting till evening even on Thursday.
Since there is a lot of pressure on passport makers in Gulmi, most of the employees have been working on passport distribution from 9 am to late evening. According to the administration office, since the passport service was closed last November due to server problems, it opened after 18 days. The administration office has informed that there is a problem of not being able to make passports on time for the customers who came due to pressure.
The work of making passports in Gulmi has stopped after the scanner was broken. "The broken machine cannot be bought anywhere else here, now the work of making passports has been stopped until another machine comes from the department," Assistant Chief District Officer Gayre said, "We are making arrangements to bring it as soon as possible after the department opens tomorrow."
