Nepal Capital Chokes With Trash On Streets

Gopal Sharma, PlanetArk 23 Jan 09;

KATHMANDU - Tons of garbage dumped on the streets in Kathmandu have left the Nepali capital choking in what is proving a new headache for the embattled government headed by the Maoist former rebels.

Disposal of waste has been a chronic problem in the hill-ringed Nepali capital and recent attempts to dump garbage in a small landfill site at Okharpouwa, a village outside Kathmandu, have met with resistance from the local residents.

Ashok Shahi, chief of the state-run Solid Waste Mobilization and Management Center overseeing the handling of the trash, said locals had erected barricades to stop garbage trucks, forcing residents to dump rubbish on the city streets.

He said the crisis has left Kathmandu, home to ancient pagoda temples and palaces that attract thousands of foreign tourists, strewn with estimated 6,000 tons of waste for nearly three weeks now.

"This is disgusting," said Ishwar Ban, an official of Nepa International, a small hotel in the tourist hub of Thamel in the heart of Kathmandu, home to two million people.

"This leaves a very bad impression about the country among the tourists who have no choice but to wear a mask or close their nose as they walk past the stinking rubbish," Ban said, while bags of rotting trash were piled up on a street close by.

The crisis is a fresh embarrassment for the new government headed by the Maoist former rebels, who ended a decade-long civil war under a 2006 peace deal and won the election for a special assembly in April last year.

The former guerrillas are also struggling to end an acute shortage of electricity that has left the impoverished Himalayan nation without electricity for up to 16 hours a day.

(Editing by Bappa Majumdar)