Kathmandu Mayor Balendra Shah (Balen) has defended his move to halt waste collection from Singha Durbar. Mayor Balen, taking to Facebook on Monday, argued that the decision is an outcome of neglect and irresponsibility of the government.

“It is difficult to coordinate with Singha Durbar (central government) and even after repeated initiatives for the past nine months, they are not able to put words into action. It seems Singha Durbar doesn’t want to coordinate with the local governments on the issues of the general people’s livelihood,” said Shah.

Mayor Balen listed out 14 initiatives he took to coordinate with different ministries including the Ministry of Home Affairs not implementing traffic light management agreement, an agreement with the Ministry of Education for digital TV in government schools but no implementation; and so on.

According to him, KMC is taking consistent efforts to reach the ministries but they haven’t brought into action the agreements and understandings reached between the KMC office and different ministries.

The garbage collection of Singha Durbar has come to a halt since Sunday, following the instructions of Mayor Shah.