Nawalparasi. The rural municipality has started looking for entrepreneurs to operate the cold storage (cooling center) built at the Susta Rural Municipality-4 Nursery in West Nawalparasi. The rural municipality chairman Upadhyay said that the municipality has reached the conclusion that it needs to collaborate with the private sector after the cold storage built at a cost of more than 50 million was left unused. He said that it is difficult to bring the cold storage built without prior preparation into operation.
The main crops of the rural municipality are sugarcane and banana, but the cold storage can only store potatoes and onions, so the cold storage has not been used, according to chairman Upadhyay. ‘The cold storage was built here in the previous term without identifying the need for it, which is why it has not been used. It is a matter of concern that the cold storage built at a huge investment has not been used. “That is why we have decided to use it by contracting it to the private sector,” he said.
Vice-Chairperson of the rural municipality Geeta Chaudhary said that a procedure has been prepared for the operation of the cold storage by the private sector. She said that although the rural municipality itself has made many efforts to operate the cold storage, it has not been successful. “We have also moved forward with a subsidy program to encourage farmers to produce potatoes and onions. For that, a budget of Rs. 1 million has been allocated for potatoes and Rs. 4 million for onions in the current fiscal year. We also asked for applications for that, but the farmers were not interested,” said Vice-Chairperson Chaudhary.
The cold storage was handed over to the rural municipality a year ago. Even after that, the municipality has completed some unfinished work. The cold storage facility has been built with the joint investment of the Lumbini Provincial Government and the rural municipality, said Humlal Bhusal, the rural municipality’s chief administrative officer. The cold storage facility has a capacity of 1,000 metric tons.
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