Kathmandu, 30 July 2024. On the occasion of its 39th anniversary, Nepal Electricity Authority planted trees on Tuesday through its offices across the country.
The employees working in the authority’s regional and divisional offices under distribution and customer service, distribution centers/sub-centers, grid offices under transmission services, substation offices, electricity generators under production services have planted trees in their office premises and other suitable places. The offices have planted fruits and other types of plants according to the climate and soil of their respective areas.
In order to convey the message that during the construction of hydropower, transmission, and distribution projects, trees are not only cut down, but tree saplings are also protected, since last year, every year on 30th of July, the authority announced a tree planting program through its offices across the country.
The staff working in the head office of the authority and the offices within the Kathmandu valley where there is no place to plant trees have planted saplings in the premises of the training management department at Kharipati in Bhaktapur.
Deepak Khadka, Minister of Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Authority, started the work of planting saplings in the premises of the department. Electricity Rules Commission Chairman Ram Prasad Dhital, Director General of Electricity Development Department Jivach Mandal, Authority Board Members Kapil Acharya and Ratan Bahadur Iyer, Authority Executive Director Kulman Ghising and staff have planted saplings. More than 100 saplings of various species like Abba, Mango, Orange, Haluvaveda, Velpatra etc. have been planted.
In the program, Minister Khadka said that tree planting is an important program to reduce the damage caused by the construction of hydropower projects and transmission lines in the forest area. Mentioning that the government has set a target of 28,000 megawatts of electricity generation and a target for the export of electricity that is consumed internally, Minister Khadka said that he will be active in doing things such as amending laws to remove the current obstacles in hydropower construction to meet the target.
Managing Director Ghising said that the authority itself has also started planting trees to give a message that we are not only cutting trees but also planting trees for compensation for the trees that are cut in the forest area after obtaining approval for construction of hydropower and transmission line projects.
Ghising said that the clean energy produced by the hydropower projects of Nepal is being consumed within the country and the surplus is being exported to the neighboring countries.