Welcome to Pokhara---tons of garbage await your arrival!

All photos by LB Thapa

 

Welcome to Pokhara—tons of garbage await your arrival!

By LB Thapa

Set aside the flowery adjectives once used to eulogize the pristine beauty of Pokhara. Today, the city presents a starkly altered face. The new Pokhara appears to offer little beyond mounting piles of garbage. Heaps of waste litter every nook and cranny, while the pervasive stench makes it difficult for residents to breathe freely or walk the streets without covering their faces. Adding to the distress, the city’s mayor has issued a directive requiring households to keep their garbage indoors, regardless of the odor it produces. 

Now it is going to be two months that all people have kept garbage at their homes. At present the situation has turned much worse.  The stinky smell has begun coming out of the bags of garbage. It is confirmed that soon the city will experience the outbreak of all kinds of diseases. 

Small kids and elderly people have already started showing early signs of sickness due to the effect of garbage stored in their houses. Almost every hospital, both private and government, has reported that the number of sick patients has sharply surged in recent times. 

This represents only one dimension of the problem. Equally troubling is the severe damage inflicted on Pokhara’s reputation as a premier tourism destination. The situation has deteriorated to the point where tourists now find it difficult to walk along the streets of Lakeside and other key tourist areas. At present, Pokhara appears to be in its most unsightly state in recent memory. For the first time, the city’s mayor seems to have failed so completely in discharging his responsibilities. Even after nearly two months without household garbage collection, the mayor appears indifferent, fiddling while the city remains engulfed in filth and waste. 

 Well now the question is, does this city have a mayor or not? The answer is yes, but the problem is he sees no problem in the city at all. For him, it seems, the present crisis is almost no crisis at all. He says unless and until a new place is found and developed, all the people should convert their houses into a dumping site. And you see the innocent people of Pokhara—they agreed without any question. It has been around two months that no garbage has been collected, but still Pokhareli people have not staged a single protest. It seems that the people have compromised with their fate, or they know this incompetent mayor of the city will do nothing no matter how much hue and cry is made, but nothing will fall on his deaf ears.   

Over the years Nepali people have noticed one common thing among all political leaders, and that is almost all political leaders repeatedly win elections and run their offices by selling lies, lies, and more lies. However, after the Gen Z revolution, all these political leaders are very afraid of facing the same people whom they fooled for years. 

Thus, it is fruitless to expect anything concrete from the present mayor of Pokhara. The present mayor, being one of the political party members, is no different than other jokers of the country. These people know only one thing, and that is fooling the people, selling lies, and making quick bucks through corruption. If you disagree with me, then please write your comment.   

The former mayor of Kathmandu, Balen Shah, set a noteworthy example for municipal leadership. He spoke less but delivered more through action. In contrast, many political leaders tend to speak at length while accomplishing little. The scale of development witnessed during Balen Shah’s tenure was unprecedented in Kathmandu’s recent history. If such progress was possible under his leadership, it raises a pertinent question: why can other mayors across the country not achieve similar results? 

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