Kathmandu, December 3

The Bagmati Clean-up Campaign has failed to attract local participation despite running for over three years.

Government officers, volunteer organisations, and other groups still form the bulk of participants volunteering in the regular weekly cleaning campaign.

According to Dr Raju Adhikari, one of the initiators of the clean-up campaign, participation of locals was despairingly low in the campaign that completed 186 weeks today. “So far, more than 400,000 people have participated in the campaign, but locals make up less than 10 per cent of the participants,” He told The Himalayan Times.

Dr Adhikari termed ‘unwillingness’ of locals and lack of government support as the reasons behind low local participation.

The campaign was run under the leadership of former chief secretary Leelamani Poudyal until three weeks ago, but he hasn’t been involved since his appointment as the Ambassador to China.