CHAITE DASAIN BEING OBSERVED Kathmandu, 17 April: Chaite Dashain in being celebrated Thursday. Devotees are flocking to temples. Families get together to celebrate the religious and social festival. nnnn . CAPITAL’S MINIMUM EMPERATURE THURSDAY 16 DEGREES CELSIUS Kathmandu, 18 April: Capital’s Thursday morning temperature at eight was 16 degrees Celsius. Mercury is expected o rise to 30 degrees Celsius in the afternoon. Minimum temperature Tuesday fell to 11.4 degrees Celsius. nnnn COMPANIES DELAYING ROAD EXPANSION DRIVE IN CAPITAL WARNED Kathmandu, 18 April The Government has warned of taking stern action against the construction companies and officials delaying the road expansion campaign in the capital, The Risinh Nepal reports. Making a field inspection on Wednesday, the High Level Supervision Committee on road expansion lead by secretary at the Prime Minister’s Office and Council of Ministers, Krishna Hari Baskota issued this warning to the concerned companies and officials. Secretaries of different ministries and senior government officials were accompanying Baskota during the inspection visit. During the inspection, Baskota said that the government would take action against the construction companies and the officials that delay the road extension works while it would reward those with excellent performance. Secretary Baskota directed the construction companies to remove the debris accumulated during the road extension process within three days. The committee said that the construction companies should complete the construction and extension of the roads within the given time frame, adding that it would not extend the term for the road expansion at any pretext. Baskota added that the government would scrap the contract signed with the construction companies and conclude the road expansion drive by keeping such companies that failed to complete their works in time. He said there will be no compromise on the quality of roads in any pretexts and urged the general public to support on the drive. The supervision team inspected the roads under construction in various parts of the Kathmandu valley. Nnnn DETAILS OF KULEKHANI POWEROUTAGE Kathmandu/, 18 April:: Power generation at Kulekhani Hydro power Project- II located at Bhainse VDC-1 of Makawanpur district has been disrupted since Tuesday mid-night as three transformers, including core transformer, were damaged by the fire, The Rising Nepal reports from Kathmandu/Hetauda/. The operation of 32 MW Kulekhani-II has been totally halted owing to the damage of the core transformer at the station. According to the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) sources, the fire damaged property worth around Rs. 40 million. KP Yadav, Chief of the Project, said that the fire broke out at around 11.45 pm on Tuesday. The fire has also destroyed other equipments including bushing casing. "Strong wind was blowing at the time of incident," he said adding, "Lightning has also hit the area on Tuesday night and the weather was adverse." Yadav said that the fire was put off within an hour with the help of fire engines, Nepal Army and Nepal Police forces. Expressing his doubt over the actual cause behind the fire at the time when it was generating quite low power than its capacity, he said that a probe team would be formed to investigate into the issue. "We have yet to confirm how the bushing machines caught fire despite low generation of power during the accident," said Yadav. He said that the maintenance of the transformer would cost around Rs. 30 million and take about six months. "As we have to import the transformer from abroad, it may take some time," he said. The transformers were installed along with the establishment of the project. Meanwhile, the NEA has stated that there would be no additional load-shedding despite the damage in the Kulekhani II as NEA would recover the deficit power from diesel plant based in Hetauda. Talking to The Rising Nepal, Bhuwan Chhetri, Chief at the Load Dispatch Centre at the NEA, said that the load-shedding would not increase further as the NEA would compensate the power deficit of the Kulekhani II project through the operation of diesel plant of Hetauda. Though the full capacity of the Kulekhani II hydropower project is 32 MW, the project was generating only 10MW power at present. nnnn