Members of the Nepali Congress picketed Birgunj Metropolitan City’s office for two hours on Sept 2. The members, led by the party’s city chief Bijay Sarraf, also met the mayor and submitted a memo demanding the proper management of waste.

Sarraf says, “The situation of waste management in the city has worsened in the past few months. The city doesn’t pick up waste daily. That’s why we picketed the office for two hours and submitted a memo to the mayor demanding that he take action right away.”

But Mayor Bijay Sarawagi says he has already made substantial changes to the city’s waste management in his four years in office. He says, “Before I became mayor, city residents could see heaps upon heaps of waste not just inside alleys, but also on the main road. Visitors used to call Birgunj a city under garbage. But things have improved a lot. But we need to do more.”

Two years ago, Birgunj handed over the responsibility for its waste management to Prithvitara-NK International JV, a private company, under a public-private partnership model. Under the deal, the company has to manage waste produced by the city for four years. The company has also been allowed to charge residents a monthly fee for its services.

Mayor Sarawagi says the step has helped manage waste in the city, but lack of support from the residents has slowed progress. According to the city, as more than 30 percent of the city’s residents don’t pay for the service, the city has waived the contractor’s obligation to pay Rs 240 million to the city. Under a revised agreement, the contractor keeps 50 percent of the money paid by households and gives the other 50 percent to the city.

“We tried to manage waste by hiring a private company after similar models worked in Biratnagar and Bharatpur,” says Mayor Sarawagi. “But the residents of our city didn’t cooperate,” he says. The city has distributed bins to each household in its 32 wards to segregate degradable and non-degradable waste.

The city has been urging residents to give their waste to collectors who come on tractors or pull carts. But instead, they throw their waste in the sewage line, complained Sarawagi.

The city even introduced new legislation to discourage haphazard disposal of waste. The new law contains provisions that can be used to impose fines of Rs 500-100,000 on those who dispose of waste haphazardly. But the law hasn’t been implemented effectively, even two years after it entered into force.