Stinking piles of rubbish are damaging tourism and locals are ‘forced to live like pigs’ in Nepal’s capital city
- Proper disposal of waste has been a chronic problem for weeks after residents close to a landfill site in a nearby village objected to it being dumped there
- Hundreds of furious villagers including women and children erected a barrier of rocks and forced about 200 trucks laden with Kathmandu’s rubbish to turn back
British tourist Richard McSorley walked past a smelly heap of rubbish in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu on Thursday, reminiscing the much cleaner temple-studded city he had visited decades ago for the first time.
“If I was a new tourist I would be disgusted,” the 48-year-old said, pointing to a pile littering the side of a street in Kathmandu, where the government is keen to draw more tourists after the country’s cash-strapped economy was battered by the Covid-19 pandemic.
For weeks, proper disposal of waste has become a chronic problem in the hill-ringed city after attempts to dump garbage in a small landfill site at a village outside Kathmandu was met with resistance from local residents.
Biswas Dhungana, a protester at the dumping site in Bancharedanda, said villagers would not allow trucks loaded with trash to enter, alleging authorities had done little to provide infrastructure and manage garbage.
“We have been forced to live like pigs in yucky conditions for several years as the government has not done anything to keep the village clean,” Dhungana told Reuters.
On Wednesday, hundreds of villagers including women and children erected a barrier of rocks on the road to Bancharedanda and forced about 200 trucks laden with Kathmandu’s garbage to return without dumping their load.
