By A Staff Reporter
Kathmandu, Sept 1: Garbage collection in Kathmandu, which has remained halted for over a month now, is set to resume from Wednesday.
The decision was taken by a meeting of Kathmandu Metropolitan City Mayor Bidhya Sundar Shakya, Chief District Officer (CDO) Kali Prasad Parajuli, Director General of Road Division Arjun Jung Thapa and Kathmandu Police Chief Ashok Singh on Tuesday.

“After discussing with the concerned bodies, we have decided to resume the disposal of the garbage piled up in the city streets. That decision was taken considering the adverse impacts uncollected waste will have on human health and environment,” said Mayor Shakya after the meeting.

“If locals from the landfill sites have a problem, the KMC will solve it. We’ll also take initiative to solve the problem through the concerned bodies,” Shakya assured.
“The KMC is committed to fulfilling the genuine demands of the locals,” he said.

He said that the waste collection shouldn’t be halted for a long time and that discussions were being held with various agencies for waste management.
Garbage collection and management would be regular from tomorrow, he assured.

Kathmandu Chief District Officer (CDO) Parajuli informed that the decision to resume garbage collection was taken after a positive discussion in the meeting. “The meeting has made roughly three or four decisions. The first decision is to pick up garbage in the Kathmandu Valley from 6 am on Wednesday,” he said.
Similarly, the Road Division has decided to repair the road leading to Sidol landfill site immediately in coordination with KMC, Parajuli added.

“If there is a security challenge in collecting and managing garbage, the home administration will make arrangements of security,” Shakya said, adding that coordination would be done between the district administration offices of Nuwakot and Kathmandu.

The garbage in Kathmandu Valley has gone uncollected for a year now, as the road leading to Sisdol, the only landfill site of 18 municipalities of the valley, remains in dire condition due to monsoon rain.
In addition, residents of Sisdole had stopped the lorries carrying garbage from reaching the dumping site for the last five days, after a 70-year-old woman of Kakani Rural Municipality-1 died on August 22, who was said to have died of cholera.

To find out whether the death was caused by cholera or not, the KMC has sent the samples of drinking water and stool of five people from the potential areas at the National Public Health Laboratory. However, the laboratory reports indicate that no cholera virus has been found in the area.