Kathmandu warns of penalties for no waste segregation. But, researchers want better incentives

The Kathmandu metropolitan city has recently announced that it will start penalising the households Rs 500 that do not segregate their waste, starting from July 17. The decision is one of the initiatives of the newly elected Kathmandu Mayor Balen Shah who has been actively speaking about solving the waste management problem of the city. However, researchers have opined that the new announcement to penalise the households is deemed to fail.

Mani Nepal and AK Enamul Haque who had conducted research in Bharatpur of Nepal and Sylhet of Bangladesh agree with the city government’s new approach to the waste management problem but suggest that for waste segregation to work at the individual level, penalising them will not be effective and will only turn out to be a burden to the city. They, instead, suggest focusing on incentivising good examples can work wonders.