Kathmandu – The problem of waste management is not new to Kathmandu valley. The valley denizens have been facing this problem for decades.
Regarding the apparently never-ending problem, Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) has been consistently saying “the landfill site has filled to its capacity or the locals obstructed the dumping of waste.”
But the government and KMC never seemed serious to seek a long-term solution of garbage management. The local bodies (currently local units) remained without elected people’s representatives for nearly two decades. Locals assumed the existing disorder was due to lack of representatives. Many people were hopeful that the problem would be resolved after the local level election picked new representatives following the adoption of new constitution. For long we held the bureaucracy guilty for every disarray and bad-governance.
It has been a year since the people’s representatives took charge of the local bodies after holding the local election according to the preamble of the new constitution. We had expected that the people’s representatives would come up with long-term plans for resolving the festering problems and implement them.
Waste management is not a new issue of Kathmandu but just a regular emergency. More often, Kathmandu residents have to deal with this issue two-three times every year. Nonetheless, there seem lack of far-sightedness to resolve the problem that has direct bearing on the public health even after the metropolitan elected an effective political leadership. Everyone stakeholders, including the metropolitan, media, political party representatives, were aware that the waste management problem would compound in the Valley during rainy season.
The media had been repeatedly drawing the attention of KMC towards this issue. But the garbage has been piling up in every junctions and Choks of Kathmandu for the past two weeks. This state of affairs has posed a serious threat of communicable diseases. Not just the pedestrians, but the people living close to roads, shopkeepers and small entrepreneurs have been affected by the garbage.
KMC said the waste management problem surfaced because the road leading to landfill site in Sisdole and its vicinity have been obstructed due to heavy rains. Now it is just the road that has been blocked. The government officials themselves have been saying that the landfill site is on the brink of filling to the brim. But no one knows what to do next after the site is filled up.
It is a welcome step that the Investment Board recently approved a project development agreement on handing over the contract to private sector for managing the wastes of 10 municipalities of Kathmandu Valley. This should be taken ahead without any delay.
Though the authority is considering giving waste management contract to private sector, no solution appears in sight until the proposed landfill site in Bancharedanda is readied.
Along with the government bodies, the general public are equally responsible for the problem of garbage management. It is necessary for us to give up the mindset that only the government authority is responsible for managing the garbage and we are free to do as we please.
We should try to manage the household garbage within the house as far as possible. In the same manner, we are throwing the garbage on the streets by evading the surveillance of government bodies. This tendency has littered the streets, apart from the piling heaps of garbage.
It is necessary for us (civilian and society) to become equally responsible and active for managing the garbage. For this, the municipality should classify the biodegradable and non-biodegradable wastes and make the people active for its proper management.
Moreover, the traditional approach two waste management should be changed and garbage purification centers should be built. As of now, we think of dumping the garbage and we need to think of managing the waste from now on.
A strong government with the support of a two-thirds people’s representatives and powerful local level can’t get away from the responsibility of managing the waste under any pretext. The government should immediately bring in an emergency plan for managing the current problem of garbage and it has already been too late to move ahead with a long-term vision. There is no obstruction for the municipality to act promptly towards that end.
