How safe are the amusement rides around town?

It is New Year, and crowds throng the Exhibition Road. Thrill seekers are here by the droves, you can hear them yell from half a mile away, or so it seems. For Bhrikuti Mandap is home to Kathmandu Fun Park, which contains several amusement rides meant for both young and old. With the addition of an amusement and water park at Sanga, it would seem that youngsters in Nepal do not have to pine for Disneyland anymore. But though this nascent industry provides the thrills they desperately seek, it is still struggling to ensure complete safety of its consumers.

Kausar Javed, a teenager who often rides the Columbus and Ferris Wheel at Bhrikuti Mandap, enjoys these rides a lot. But when you ask her about safety, she grimaces. “The seat next to the last has its handles falling off,” says she. “But if you hang on tight, you won’t fall,” she concludes gaily. Forget safety harnesses, rusted handlebars are the norm, and it is not uncommon to find a few damaged bars like the one Kausar pointed out. It is only the cheerful spirit of the consumers that keeps these flaws from becoming lawsuits. It is also not unusual to find riders flinging off the safety bar and hopping down before the ride completely stops.

It is immediately apparent that much more precautions are taken for rides for very young children. For example, one of the rides at Bhrikuti Mandap is built like a cage –there is no way anyone can fall and it moves very, very slowly. Another one called Teacup has an operator constantly moving in and out of the ride to take care of fidgety children. This too moves very slowly.

But some of the times, the operators moving in and out of the ride are not taking care of the riders, but performing minor repairs with hammers and mallets. “They are trained mechanics,” says Nabin, ride operator at the Park. “First you get to be a helper, then an operator, and only then a mechanic.” He himself got to touch a machine only after working for six months as a helper.

But Nabin is a temporary staff, hired only for the holiday season. There are many other temporary operators hired for busy seasons who have no more knowledge of the machine than the on/off switch. But they can be seen going underneath the rides and checking and repairing flaws. Nabin may have got his knowledge from experience, but many credit their knowledge of the machines to intuition. The officers at Kathmandu Fun Park were unavailable for comments on its security aspects.

At Kathmandu Fun Valley in Sanga, electrical supervisor Upendra Karki informed that while he was specifically trained for the rides, all the operators are given weekly, monthly and six-monthly trainings. They also have trained lifeguards to help at the water section. The water sports there have been very popular, five-year-old Arpit Upadhyaya enjoyed himself so much that he refused to leave the Park.

But on a more serious note, though it has an experienced medical officer at hand for first aid, the Park does not have insurance for its consumers.

“Since the Park is fairly new, there have been no untoward incidents. Perhaps that is the reason we have not thought of insurance, though we take security seriously,” says Sudeshna KC, a human resources and admin staff at the Park.

Over at the Central Zoo, Surya Bhakta Nakarmi has taken an insurance policy of Rs. 500,000 on his personal initiative for his ride called Funny Temple. The lack of uniformity regarding something as crucial as insurance results from the fact that there is no central body governing the installment, management, and security of amusement parks as a whole.

“As a business, they need to take permission from whatever local body they fall under. But as for the ride itself, the owners operate it at their own risk,” said Laxman Aryal, CEO of Kathmandu Metropolitan City Office. The Park at Bhrikuti Mandap is governed by the Social Welfare Council, the one at Sanga by Bhaktapur Municipality Office, and Surya Bhakta has registered his workshop with the Department of Cottage and Small Industries.

This means that the rides operate with little or no government supervision. As businesses, they all pay taxes. But other than that, there is no interest in or monitoring of the rides from the government side. Like all fairs and carnivals, amusement parks are also governed by the Local Self Government Act. But the Act only addresses social factors like general security and peace, not specifically the technical aspects of amusement rides. Faced with a vacuum of regulations, the owners are the ones who decide crucial elements like safety, maintenance of the physical structure, and appointment of able candidates.

“Internal rules govern such issues,” confirms Sushil Chaudhari, chief of Bhrikuti Mandap Operation Committee.

International standards dictate that the speed of a ride, the height of the person who can ride in it and other precautionary notices must be put up where the consumer can see them. But no such signs are in evidence anywhere near the rides at Bhrikuti Mandap, though there are notices suggesting that people with heart disease and epilepsy refrain from riding. As for age and height of riders, Sajani Khadgi, ticket seller, informs that they do not let children ride the Columbus—one of the more dangerous rides. But without objective measures of who is a child and who is not, this rule is informal and not strictly enforced.

Questions like whether the structure can hold the specified number of people, whether it needs updating, and whether the safety harness is sufficient for the kind of ride are also decided only by the owners of the rides. As for the physical structure itself, Nakarmi informs that he plans to continue operating Funny Temple at the Zoo as long as it doesn’t fail him.

“This is Nepal, we don’t change or update the structure just for cosmetic damages,” says he.

Machines of this size require regular lubrication, maintenance, and checking for flaws. Since he is the designer and technical officer of Funny Temple, Nakarmi takes care of these tasks himself and can guarantee safety on the ride. But the same cannot be said of structures which are at the hands of untrained or semi-trained operators. This is especially true of temporary rides which are set up during carnivals and dismantled soon after, and many of them are seen in derelict conditions. Consumers who seek the adrenaline rush need to keep in mind that they do so at their own risk.

Published in Republica on 18 April 2014, Page 7