Syangja has put barbed wire on the bridge over Ramdi river at the border between Syangja and Palpa districts, and Gandaki and Province 5 by extension, along the Siddhartha Highway joining Pokhara and Butwal with Gandaki deciding to enforce the lockdown more stringently.
"The provincial government has said nobody would be allowed to enter," Assistant Chief District Officer of Syangja Dhruba Giri told Setopati. "We put barbed wire after that."
He added that Nepal Police and Armed Police Force (APF) have been deployed at the provincial border. "Ask the provincial government," he quipped when asked why.
Mayor of Waling municipality that is at the border with Palpa Dilip Pratap Khand expressed ignorance about that. "I have also heard that they have put barbed wire at the border," he told Setopati. "The administration has not given any information about that to me."
The meeting of COVID-19 prevention and management committee of Gandaki on Friday had decided to make lockdown more effective.
"Sending individuals coming to Gandaki province from another province back from the border, and controlling possible movement between districts and local bodies inside Gandaki province by keeping them in quarantine in the district or local body concerned," read the first point of the decision taken by the committee chaired by Chief Minister Prithvi Subba Gurung.
Syangja administration says it has put barbed wire on the basis of that decision.
Chief Secretary of Gandaki Hari Prasad Basyal, meanwhile, has said there has been no decision to put barbed wire. "We have only talked about stringent checking not shutting the highway," Basyal told Setopati. "It cannot be shut down in a way obstructing the highway."
CDO of Tanahu Badri Nath Adhikari revealed that there has been no obstruction in the other main entry point into Gandaki, the bridge in Muglin along the Prithvi Highway. "There is no way we can shut the highway. We have removed even the obstructions kept by locals in the roads going to villages."
