Pioneer Municipal Drawing Camp in Nepal
– by Yash Man Karmacharya (CIUD)
Pioneer Municipal Drawing Camp in Nepal
– by Yash Man Karmacharya (CIUD)
Oct 17, The Centre for Integrated Urban Development (CIUD) in coordination with Lalitpur Metropolitan City – Ward 22, LUMANTI, BARDeC, SABHA organized ‘7 days Municipal Drawing Camp” in the Bungamati with financial support from UN Habitat and European Union. There is two major objectives of the campaign. First expectation is that the youth/young participant will know and learn the ground reality, Secondly, with the interaction with the community they will combine their skills and come out with better product in citation with heritage guideline and norms.
This objectives will be the step for the youth to aware on priority to promote socio-technology for better liveable settlements. Also it will support and enhance heritage settlement in bridging community with legal drawings approval in municipality.
On the opening remarks Mr. Prem Krishna Shrestha, ED of CIUD highlighted by saying “Very warm welcome to everybody, this camp will benefit not only the community but it will be the learning platform in practical ways in coordination with the community.” Likewise, he also said that we heard eyes camp, health camp, and dental camp but “Drawing Camp” is never heard. I am glad to say that this DRAWING CAMP is the first camp being ever held and starts from this heritage settlement Bungamati, ward no. 22 of Lalitpur Metropolitan City.
Mr. Padma Sunder Joshi, UN Habitat Manager added that this settlement is very important and can be the major traditional tourism HUB National and Internationally. As Pashupatinath is well-renowned for Hinduism same way Bunga Dyo or Red Macchindranath is well-renowned for Buddhist Religion, number of the people from Sri Lanka, Taiwan, China etc. visit here comparatively in large numbers. As an internal tourism within Kathmandu valley in the occasion on monthly bases the people from Bhaktapur, Kirtipur, Kathmandu and Core of Lalitpur and so on visit every year, they have the schedule of celebration. So this place is very rich in tourism sector from ancient period.
Mr. Joshi recalls ‘SEED’ behind this project design which is an emotional attachment. “During a meeting, one of the participants said, My house is not damaged by the earthquake (hard-hit around 7.8 rector occurred in April 2015) neither affected anyone of my family members but I am concerned that now I have very little saving hardly enough for a week though I economically utilize it. But what after that time? How will I earn money? How do I run my home – now no tourist will visit Bungamati and lots of debris are remained to be removed, don’t know what time would it take? By then my family member will have to sleep without food that will be my nightmare disaster again.”
He also says, that now it is time to collaborate and learn the social context for drawings in heritage settlement like Bungamati. So, hope this camp will build up in bringing engineers to learn in coordination and interaction with local people.
Mr. Arjun Maharjan, Vice chairman, BARDeC, he highlighted that, BARDeC is the Bridging Committee formed after earthquake for re-construction process and we are here to support and coordinate in any activities of re-construction in Bungamati.
Mr. Binesh Maharjan, Vice Chairperson, District Coordination Committee, Lalitpur, says that, the people here want to go on process of drawing approval, but it is very hard to get approval. The people are facing many technical hurdles, therefore they are bound to build building without the approval from the local government. Therefore, to bring up the easiness in the drawing and its approval this camp is very helpful and is being held. Hope you all will teach the community and learn yourself through the community.
Lastly, Ambir Raj Shakya, Ward- 22 Chairman, Lalitpur Metropolitan City remarked that first of all, I would like to thank all the participant who are really here to learn, teach and show skills. Here we have many traditional and cultural activities due to which tourist visit the place from very earlier and after the earthquake many donors had come to support Bungamati in many ways. In this process, UN Habitat, CIUD, Lumanti, Shabha, BARDeC is working more in close coordination and mobilizing, engaging community in front. Therefore, I aspect that this camp will support in making drawings and will help in awaring the people on drawings and its consequences to support them in long run.
We have many problems in Municipal Drawing and as earlier the local skilled drawing mentor used to give drawing in A4 size with handmade sketch, so the house owner build accordingly, which made the owner and ward very hard in processing the approval later. After understanding the ground context of this community and on the base of heritage guidelines, do move forward and fulfill the main objectives of this program. We from LMC ward no. 22 team and BARDeC team will fully support and wish you all success with this I would like to announce the closing of the first session of the program.
In the program Institute of Engineering (IOE) students and students from other colleges, local people and local stakeholders were present. All together 56 number of people were present in the program. It is a 7 days long program which will end up to October 23, 2019, where 21 numbers of Architectural Students and two professional teachers namely Shyam Sunder Kawan and Nasala Sayami from Nepal Engineering College (NEC) will take over the campaign in close supervision and coordination with CIUD and LUMANTI team. During the session around 30 people had come up with their house details to fill up the forms for processing the drawings accordingly.