Go Nepal e-Magazine

FEATURE
Nepal Reopens Heritage Sites
Despite UN Concerns
The Nepal government declared several damaged
heritage sites open to the public on Monday,
in a bid to recover tourism revenues in
the region hit by an earthquake, but United
Nations officials worried that the buildings were not
entirely ready.
Nepal’s many temples and palaces had been a significant
tourist draw for the impoverished country, and
many were all but destroyed in the April 25 earthquake,
which killed more than 8,700 people.
“World Heritage sites, the treasures of the Nepalese
economy, should not remain closed forever,” said
Nepal’s tourism secretary, Suresh Man Shrestha, who
added that he was hoping to garner visitors for “earthquake
disaster education tourism.”
More than 700 monuments were damaged in the quake,
and Mr. Shrestha said the costs of reconstruction would
run into the tens of millions of dollars. The reopened
monuments include the Durbar Square complexes in
Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Patan, as well as Swayambhunath,
a shrine on top of a hill at the northwestern
edge of Kathmandu.
Christian Manhart, the head
of UNESCO’s Nepal office
in Kathmandu, said Monday
that the organization had
urged the government to delay
the reopening of the sites, as
he believed that two of them
were still either unsafe or vulnerable to theft because
the rubble from the earthquake was not yet cleared.
“At Kathmandu Durbar Square there is the huge palace
museum — one very big building which is totally
shaky,” he said. “The walls are disconnected from one
another so this big wall can fall down at any moment.”
The country’s Tourism Department said Monday that
the government would instate safety measures, including
providing helmets to visitors and security at the
monuments, and that the museum building at Kathmandu’s
Durbar Square would remain closed. However,
Mr. Manhart said that even allowing visitors close to it
could be dangerous.
Swayambhunath, the hilltop shrine, was both unsafe
and vulnerable to looting because uncleared
rubble remains, he said. Mr. Manhart said he had
written the director general of Nepal’s Archaeology
Department, Bhesh Narayan Dahal, two weeks ago to
urge him to delay the reopening.
“Now, Nepal is safe,” said Kripasur Sherpa, Nepal’s
minister for culture, tourism and civil aviation, in
televised comments at the reopening of the Durbar
Square in Bhaktapur on Monday.
“They say that there is some pressure to reopen those
sites so they can request entrance fee, which is badly
needed for the rehabilitation of the monuments,” Mr.
Manhart said of the letter he received in response.
(The New York Times)