Kathmandu Valley Mayors Forum decides to entrust govt with waste management responsibility

Kathmandu / Jan 5: The sixth meeting of the Kathmandu Valley Mayors Forum has concluded with a decision to transfer the responsibility of waste management in the Kathmandu Valley to the Government of Nepal. This resolution was reached during a meeting organized by Gokarneshwor Municipality on Wednesday.

Chiribabu Maharjan, the mayor of Lalitpur Metropolitan Municipality, highlighted that the agreement between the Government of Nepal and NepWaste in 2018 has not been implemented to date. Despite the Nepal Investment Board forwarding it to the Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) for execution, the KMC returned it to the government. Consequently, the decision was made to urge the government to take charge of the remaining waste management tasks.

The mayors decided to appeal to the government for waste management across all municipalities in the valley. NepWaste had presented several conditions that local municipalities could not meet, including the inability to provide the demanded land. Moreover, no municipality had participated in formulating NepWaste’s Term of Reference. Hence, the mayors proposed that the Nepal government handle the remaining tasks in this matter.

Lalitpur Mayor Maharjan stated, “The focus of the sixth meeting of the Kathmandu Valley Mayors Forum, organized by Gokarneshwor Municipality, was primarily on waste management. The decision emerged to seek the intervention of the Nepal government in overseeing waste management for all municipalities in the valley, thereby allowing the government to handle the remaining responsibilities.”