Kathmandu, February 10:

The newly-elected mayor of Kathmandu Metropolitan City, Rajaram Shrestha, today said “high income’ and “long life” are the two sutras capable of making the capital a city really “worth living in”.

Shrestha, who ran for the mayor’s post as a RPP-Thapa nominee, won the mayor’s seat, securing 25,365 votes.

He was declared the winner this morning.

Talking to The Himalayan Times, Shrestha said: “There are two sutras for me — “long life” and “high income” — and these sutras can change the whole essence of the capital. They are inter-dependent and complementary. If one can earn more, one can think of a better lifestyle and if one is healthy, one can earn more.”

Shrestha said he would give priority to making Kathmandu a tourist centre as only this was the secret of a high income from little investment.

“Tourism will give the true picture of Kathmandu to the world, and will at the same time provide lots of opportunities of income generation to the residents who love the city,” he said.

He said that he would concentrate on providing Kathmanduites with clean drinking water, improve the drainage and sewage system and provide quality roads. He added that shared effort was needed to fight the pollution that Kathmandu is suffering from.

According to him, though a decade has passed since the city of Kathmandu upgarded into a metropolis, too many things remain to be done to develop basic infrastructure in the city.

Those eight months, during which he served in the KMC as nominated deputy-mayor, was the beginning of a good trend wherein the office attempted to be more transparent and responsible to the people, said Shrestha.

He refused to comment on what the former mayors did or did not do but said: “A new beginning for the capital city has arrived”.