Kathmandu Mayor Balen Shah has issued instruction to not pick garbage from the Singha Durbar and the Shital Niwas from Saturday. Waste materials are starting to pile up at the country’s administrative center and other sensitive areas of the state after his instruction to Paribartan Nepal, a private company that has been collecting garbage.
“Garbage of Singha Durbar will not be picked from today. Leaders there will have to be dumped at Sisdole if the country really has to be cleaned,” Shah had posted on Facebook Saturday to inform about stopping garbage collection.
Both the expression and the deed of Shah are irresponsible and anarchic.
Those in public position should not just fulfill their responsibilities but also maintain decorum of their post. They should also think about dignity of others. What does he actually mean by ‘leaders from Singha Durbar will have to be dumped at Sisdole if the country really has to be cleaned’? This is absolutely anarchic and apolitical expression in itself. This says more about Shah himself than other leaders.
Leaders, whether seated at the Singha Durbar or the Bag Durbar, have both strengths and weaknesses. People have elected them to their respective posts expecting them to resolve the country’s problems remaining within their limits and maintaining dignity.
Shah seems to suffer from this mental illness that only he is right and all the others deserve to be dumped at Sisdole. He can criticize the works of others and also recommend to work in a certain manner. He can offer support but cannot run away from his responsibilities by abusing and blaming others.
He posted a defense of his decision to not pick garbage from the Singha Durbar on Monday listing the works in which 14 ministries of the federal government did not cooperate with him. The majority of the issues he has raised are beyond his jurisdiction. He has stake in them in capacity of a citizen and a mayor, and can also speak about them or provide suggestion. But he cannot stop picking of garbage from the Prime Minister’s Office and the President’s Office citing lack of cooperation by others in issues not in his jurisdiction.
Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) not picking garbage from the Prime Minister’s Office and the President’s Office is as unimaginable and irresponsible as the federal government stopping budget allocated for the KMC or not sending staffers citing lack of support from mayor.
Let us look at some of the issues he says that the federal government has not cooperated on. He has said that he met different ministers once or twice and talked about issues ranging from the program of bringing Melamchi water round the year to Kathmandu by connecting Yangri and Larke rivers to Melamchi to management of Melamchi water and pipeline, appropriate management of the Kathmandu Upatyaka Khanepani Limited (KUKL), procurement of fertilizers for the farmers, cooperative regulations and laws, expansion of the Ring Road, sanitation of public hospitals, insurance, implementation of the Supreme Court (SC) order to demolish the top story of the Health Ministry, and even passing the map of airport.
He has stated that he reached the conclusion to not pick garbage from the Singha Durbar as the problems have not been resolved and there was no appropriate coordination despite his efforts for nine months.
Some of the issues and works he has raised may be of concern for him but definitely not in his jurisdiction. Those problems will not be resolved merely after him meeting the ministers and talking with them. The line ministries and government bodies work in their own manner and there may be dalliance and lack of appropriate coordination in some of those works. There may even be corruption in some of those works. But that all comes down to the capacity of our overall state system. That is precisely why we are in the current state.
If a mere meeting of the mayor with the ministers were to resolve those problems, they would not have remained unresolved until now in the first place. There is an error in the thinking that problems remain only because nobody wants them resolved. To think all seated at the Singha Durbar are crooks and say that they deserve to be dumped at Sisdole is his hubris and madness.
Why many problems that the KMC can resolve on its own remain as they were if the problems facing the country could be resolved magically as he seems to think or if mere good intentions were to suffice? Has the KMC completed all the works that it can do on its own?
The KMC has not been able to resolve many problems that many other metropolitan cities have resolved.
Let us look at a small example. There is problem of squatters in almost all the metropolitan cities of the country. There are genuine and fake squatters in all metropolitan cities. It is necessary to first ascertain who out of them are genuine squatters and who are not to resolve the problem. Record must be collected by going to the squatter settlements for that. It is the responsibility of the metropolitan cities to do that. The state has formulated a policy to address those identified as genuine squatters in that manner. The state accepts that it has responsibility toward them. It is basic responsibility of the state even from the perspective of social justice. Many metropolitan cities have moved forward toward resolving the problem after collecting record of squatters but the KMC is not ready to collect record of squatters. It contends that all of them are encroachers and their record, therefore, should not be collected. Shah stresses on removing them even at the cost of a bloody clash deploying excavators and the police. He has made many attempts to that regard. The KMC has been forced to take a step back after clash with the squatters on each occasion.
His main gripe with the Singha Durbar is lack of mobilization of police to exercise force on the squatters. A civilized state that believes in social justice never can, and should, support him in this wrong objective.
Mayor Balen Shah suffers from this attitude that all he thinks and believes in is right, and all others think and believe in is wrong, and only he is right and all others are wrong. His prescription of dumping all others at Sisdole to develop the country is manifestation of that attitude.
KMC is not just Balen Shah. It also has other elected representatives. He seems to have unilaterally taken the decision to not pick garbage from the Singha Durbar and the Shital Niwas without consulting anyone. Deputy mayor and the ward chair concerned have confirmed that the mayor’s decision was made without informing them. The other elected people’s representatives of KMC also cannot evade this issue now. They must speak clearly whether what he has done is right or wrong. They must form a position as to whether to do so in the pretext of cooperation from the federal government is right or not.
Let us assume that the Prime Minister’s Office and the ministries actually did not cooperate. Why drag the office of the constitutional president in this? How is the office of the head of state connected to this? Why was the prestige of that office not considered even a bit?
Let the other elected representatives of KMC and the federal government speak clearly to Mayor Shah. Let the federal government immediately provide support and coordination it can in the works of KMC. Not just the KMC but even other local bodies and provincial government have been facing obstruction in their works in lack of necessary laws and downward delegation of the rights. Let the federal government work for resolving that as soon as possible.
Let everyone remind Mayor Balen Shah of his limits, the dignity and responsibilities of mayoralty; tell him that federal, provincial and local governments must move forward with mutual support, coordination and cooperation; and remind him that problems cannot be resolved by blaming and abusing one another.
