Kathmandu, February 7

A committee has been formed under the coordination of Chief Secretary Somlal Subedi to mark 200 weeks of the Bagmati Clean-up Campaign through a major event. The campaign would reach its 200th week on March 11, 2017.

Assistant coordinators of the committee are Dinesh Thapaliya, secretary at the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers, and Kishore Thapa, the campaigner of Bagmati Clean-up Campaign.

The committee was formed at a meeting held at the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers on Monday, with all ministries’ secretaries, campaigners, and authorities of municipalities as members.

According to an attendant of the meeting and one of the initiators of the campaign Raju Adhikari, the newly-formed committee was instructed to organise a special event to mark the campaign entering its 200th week. The committee has proposed three major activities for the day.

“We have proposed three events — cleaning of the whole stretch of the Bagmati River at the same time; painting and essay-writing competitions, and other literary programmes for children, and the main programme at the Sankhamul confluence,” Dr Adhikari told The Himalayan Times.

The campaign saw more than 500,000 participants, and the involvement of over 140 organisations in its first 195 weeks. Similarly, the High Powered Committee for Integrated Development of the Bagmati Civilisation is constructing 22 gardens on the banks of the Bagmati River.

Meanwhile, the HPCIDBC said it is also organising an event for civilians to bathe in the Bagmati River, to disseminate the message that the river is now clean. The Bagmati Clean-up Campaign was launched on May 19, 2013.