Kathmandu, August 19:

Though employees of the Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) are working hard to collect the city’s solid waste, heaps of garbage still dot different parts of the metropolis.

“We are still collecting garbage at Baneswor,” Macha Babu Malakar, the president of the Nepal Swotantraq Safai Majdoor Union, said this evening. He said the KMC employees were unable to lift more waste due to lack of equipment and vehicles.

KMC’s Chief Executive Officer Dinesh Thapaliya said everything would be “fine” within the next few days. “The problem arose due to the continuous rainfall, the agitation of the employees’ union and lack of resources,” he said, adding that he has already arranged for four more trucks from the Lalitpur Sub Metropolitan City that would lift the waste. He said the KMC will also start collecting garbage from those areas from where the private sector had been collecting it earlier.

“We have already made a schedule. We will now publish a notice and go to the areas informing the locals through loudspeakers,” he said.

Meanwhile, the private sector organisations are on a warpath. They have been demanding that the KMC either nallow them to dump the garbage at the Teku Transfer Station or provide fuel to take the garbage to the Sisdole Landfill Site.

General secretary of the NGO Federation for Environment Conservation Dhruba Acharya said the private sector is agitating for the past 11 days.

A total of 310 tonnes of garbage is collected from the city everyday. While the KMC collects only 170 tonnes, the private sector collects 140 tonnes. The private sector organisations today organised a protest rally from Maitighar Mandala to the Ministry of Local Development. They also staged a sit-in in front of the ministry building for one hour.