Service recipients face inconvenience due to delays in repairing charging station

Kathmandu: Service recipients have been deprived of service as the charging station based at Muglin Bazaar, Ichhakamana rural municipality-5, Chitwan, remains dysfunctional nearly for two months.

It is said that the charging nozzle of the charging station has broken and two DC chargers have been dysfunctional for less than a year since the station was installed. Only one AC charger is functioning at present. It takes a long time to charge vehicles only from the AC charger, it is said.

Dhruba Gurung of Gorkha who came to charge his car complained that service-seekers including himself have been facing problems as the charging station here remains unrepaired. As he said, one has to wait for hours on end to charge vehicles using an AC charger. He said his vehicle is charged only six percent in 20 minutes.

‘The vehicle used to be fully charged in one hour when the charging station was functioning. Now, one has to wait for 2-3 hours to fully charge the car,’ he expressed his dismay. He complained that although the government has emphasized using electric vehicles, it has not paid attention to constructing additional charging stations and repairing the dysfunctional ones in time. According to him, people have to wait in queue for many hours to charge their vehicles since there are not enough charging stations.

Shiva Adhikari, project manager of Digo, the company which is responsible for constructing the charging station, said that the problem is due to the broken charging nozzle and they have already ordered the required spares that need to be changed.

He added that the equipment would be arriving in a day or two. He said the repair works would be carried out in a day or two by dispatching a technical team. Adhikari said 62 charging stations have been installed throughout the country through the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA). He stated problems have been detected in 20 of them.

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