Some agitated Maoists dumping truckloads of nauseous garbage right in front of the Ministry of Local Development at Hariharbhavan on Tuesday was akin to giving the shameless authorities a wake up call, who had been, for almost the past two weeks, sleeping over Kathmandu’s highly lethal waste output. Following deliberations, the residents of Okharpauwa landfill site have allowed the government to dump the garbage for a week on condition that the stalled development works are taken up. Though all their demands don’t seem to be totally unreasonable, doubts still remain over the Local Development Minister’s assurance of meeting, at least the major ones, within a brief span of seven days.

Though the consent to dump garbage comes as an immediate respite to only some Kathmanduites, the rest presumably will have to bear with the eyesore for some more days. The drafting of a special Bill on waste management could be an option to overcome the obnoxious problem for at least a couple of years. But with no long-term solution in sight, the management of the waste will continue to plague the deniz-ens, with the situation aggravating during summers. Turning a deaf ear to the doctors’ unmistakable war-ning against a looming epidemic is a matter of rank indifference. For, the authorities ought to realise that the cost of managing a pandemic will be lot higher than preventing it through investment in initiatives geared to fulfilling the public’s genuine demands.