KMC all set to clean up Bishnumati banks

HIMALAYAN NEWS SERVICE

KATHMANDU: Undeterred by the failure of its past efforts, the Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) is gearing up to rid the City’s river banks of garbage.

“As part of our weeklong City clean-up campaign beginning Wednesday, we plan to clean the Bishnumati river banks,” said KMC executive chief Kedar Bahadur Adhikari. KMC said it plans to involve local communities, metropolitan officials and NGOs for the clean-up of the river stretch from Balaju to Teku. “The campaign aims to make local communities aware of the need to manage waste properly by involving them,” he said, adding that it will urge people not to throw waste haphazardly. About 100 days ago, the KMC had launched an awareness campaign mobilising Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai, government ministers and secretaries to sweep the streets of the metropolis. Besides this, the KMC has spent millions of rupees to raise awareness on the need to keep the city clean.

Despite such efforts, the sanitation scenario of the metropolis, where about 1 million people live, is not encouraging.

Many people throw waste haphazardly instead of disposing waste in designated places. The Solid Waste Management Act 2011 has envisioned those, who violate waste management rules, Rs 500 to Rs 100,000 each and jail term of up to three months. “The law alone is not enough to maintain everything. We need cooperation from local communities to implement the rules, punish the culprits and keep the city clean,” he said. “Therefore, we urge the public to help the civic body keep the city clean.” Adhikari said past failures in cleaning up the City will not deter the KMC from making fresh city clean-up efforts.

About 350 metric tonnes of waste is generated daily in the metropolis, one of the poorest municipals in terms of performance among the country’s 58 municipalities.