Capital stinking again with uncollected garbage

Garbage uncollected from the past one week remains piled up in the streets of the capital Kathmandu, defacing the city and causing much nuisance to its residents with its stink and possible health hazards.

The dispute between Kathmandu Municipality staffers and the contractor who have been collecting garbage by going to houses over the “management” of the garbage collected by the latter has resulted in garbage remaining piled up in the streets from the past one week, Kantipur daily reported

Heaps of uncollected garbage can be seen in every thoroughfare and busy streets of Kathmandu, even in front of hospitals. The situation has been further compounded by the rainy season due to which there is high risk of outbreak of contagious diseases like Typhoid, Jaundice and Diarrhea.

The dispute has taken a serious turn after the municipality staffs said they won’t ‘manage’ the garbage collected by contractors and reached the decision of not allowing them to throw the garbage at the Garbage Transfer Station at Teku.

Saying that the said contractor is not the agency responsible for garbage management and that they don’t pay any kind of “royalty” to the municipality, the municipality staffs had prevented the contractor from dumping the garbage at the station. They are of the stance that if the private companies can collect garbage by going to the houses of the city residents, then they should dump that in the garbage dumping site in Sisdole.

The metropolitan staffs have padlocked the transfer station as the garbage collector from the private sector have ‘parked’ more than two dozen garbage filled vehicles in front of the Kathmandu Municipality Corporation (KMC) Office from Monday.

“They (contractors) are collecting garbage from houses and just leaving it at street corners,” a KMC staff told Kantipur Daily.

“We are not getting any work. Why should we allow the private sector to collect garbage,” another KMC staff asked.

KMC staff have also stopped collecting garbage from the streets seeing the private sector staging a demonstration in front of the municipality office demanding that they be allowed to dump garbage at the transfer station.

Basu Upreti, a garbage contractor, said that the residents of Sisdole create all kinds of obstruction for the private sector to dump garbage there. “The problem started after the municipality prevented us from dumping the garbage at the Teku Transfer Station,” Upreti told Kantipur. nepalnews.com ag Aug 16 07