KATHMANDU: The government is all set to mobilise the Nepali Army and police to collect garbage from the Kathmandu Valley effective from tomorrow.

Dr Sumitra Amatya, general manager at the Solid Waste Management and Resource Mobilisation Centre, under the Ministry of Local Development, said that the decision to this effect was taken today.

The waste disposal in the Valley came to a grinding halt for the sixth straight day today following the local body employees' strike. About 600 metric tonnes, 350 from the Kathmandu Metropolitan City alone, is produced on a daily basis in the Valley. The local body staffers demand that the government implement trade union rights, promote them to permanent positions and provide facilities on equal terms with that of the civil servants. But the government has refused to promote them on the ground that they were appointed without meeting the government standard recruitment rules.

There are about 35,000 staffers, 7,000 of them temporary, in the 75 district development committees, 58 municipalities and 3,915 village development committees across the nation.

"We could not collect garbage from the streets and dispose them in landfill site today as well," said Rabin Man Shrestha, chief of the Environment Management Department at the KMC.

According to him, about 1,800 metric tonnes of garbage has piled up on the streets of Kathmandu. The ministry has started a series of discussions with the legal and security agencies and is contemplating over deploying security personnel in collecting and dumping of garbage, he added.

"We'll still wait till tomorrow for a Cabinet meeting to address the demands of the agitating unions," said Amatya.

Issuing forth a charter of demands, the Local Bodies Joint Movement Central Coordination Committee-affiliated to different political parties-have obstructed the collection of garbage since Thursday.