Pokhara- the city of Monopoly!

Posted on October 24, 2009 by Ekendra

This is it finally. Never wanted to write about this. Never wanted to let people outside Pokhara know that this is the city of monopoly after all they all know Pokhara the famous tourist destination in spite of other backside stories. Only those surviving and typical of this small unplanned, unmanaged and pathetic city dwellers could find few drops of choices in many aspects.

This is totally what I mean by- my personal feeling of inside Pokhara.

Syndication, privatization and monopolistic approach of all private sectors. After all, unawared public…

  • ISP Monopoly – Ever thought how much a per hour internet of 28kbps costs in Pokhara? No matter which cyber cafe you go, it’s the same Rs 30. They got a cyber cafe owners organization which will determine works like letting other to open cafe or not, how much to charge (during loadshedding and regular hour),— seems like there is no government in Nepal, huh and ….. Just a few FewaNet, WLink, BuddhaNet and Pokhara i-Net, (not talking NTC, Mero mobile and UTL the nameshake wireless net) are local ISPs in Pokhara which have nodal points in Kathmandu to broadcast here. The cost is devastatingly high. General people can’t purchase, even if they purchase they get bandwidth of frustations (yes, absolutely my point and my experience).
  • Cable TV Monopoly- Can you believe no two cable operators exist in Pokhara? You can’t open another Cable operation in Pokhara. Even if you, you’ll get merged sooner or later. Hence, the obvious monopoly. You must pay increased lumsum amount to these elephants for just 35 or few more channels (and repeatingly list goes to 65 around).
  • Public Vehicle Monopoly- You can’t buy new vehicle and queue it to new route as permitted by local government and police. There are very strong (yes, stronger than another force in this country) force of taxi drivers, bus drivers, helpers and so on. The older the vehicle, the more expensive it becomes. A micro-bus purchased 5 years before for 18 lakhs now costs 37lacks here. What do you say?
  • Hotels/Restaurants Monopoly
  • Phewa/Begnas Lake Boating Monopoly
  • Parking Lot Monopoly
  • And … monopoly of monopoly

More on this later..

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This entry was posted in Nepal, Perception, Persona and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.
  • manoharpandey
    yes, you are absolutely right. look at the transport services, for example. the prithiwi raajmaarga bus samiti runs on syndicate system, which thinks that the prithwi highway is its private road. no other transport cos. of nepal can operate their services to and from pokhara, they have to struggle.

    But, on the other hand, the buses of this samiti operate on almost all the highways. why not other cos. ban this samiti buses from operating on the highways of their areas? you will find cartailing and syndicate systems of monopoly even in vegetables, fruits, chicken, eggs, meat, etc. markets in pokhara.

    recently the hotel association has ordered all hotels not to charge below Rs.500 per bed per night. these monopoly thugs are fleecing helpless consumers.
  • chisopani
    What monopoly are you talking about? Could you be more specific?
  • Nepal is always the same. Only business persons get benefited and common people are always victimized.

    When will our country's pattern change? It is so sad.
  • Always those so called private sectors come in between the governmental facilities. Pokhara is also the city of monopoly in lake side I think. I have not resided in other areas so I dont know about those but Lakeside is economic monopoly area....
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