Lalitpur Metropolitan City to start a new drive to remove visual pollutants
Officials at Lalitpur City say their drive to remove illegal billboards and hoardings would begin from Sunday. In this file photo, officials from the Kathmandu Metropolitan City remove a hoarding board from Kalimati area. Elite Joshi/TKP
After the Kathmandu Metropolitan City intensified its efforts to remove illegal hoardings and billboards to avoid being hauled up for contempt of court, the neighbouring Lalitpur Metropolitan City has also proposed a major drive to clear its area of visual pollutants.
“Lalitpur Metropolitan City will not get any complaints in the court regarding visual pollution,” said Raju Maharjan, the spokesperson for the City. He said the City has already removed two hoarding boards from Satdobato.
Kathmandu Metropolitan City had intensified its clean-up drive in mid-January after Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa instructed the concerned authority to promptly clear all illegal hoarding boards following a contempt of court filed by senior advocate Padam Bahadur Shrestha against the City. In his plea, Shrestha pointed out that Kathmandu had not heeded to the Supreme Court's ruling of 2015.
Prem Prasad Bhattrai, chief administrative officer at the Lalitpur Metropolitan City, said his office will intensify its clean-up drive so that they don’t get complaints from anywhere. This is the first time the City has taken the initiative to remove visual pollutants from its area.
Officials at the City said that in the drive’s first phase, they would be removing hoardings and billboards that were placed without taking permission from the City and had not paid their taxes to the city office.
“Around 80 percent of hoardings and billboards in the city were placed without the permission from the city office,” said Dilli Raj Shakya, chief of the city’s Revenue Division.
Anup Ojha was a reporter for The Kathmandu Post primarily covering social issues, crime, and human interest stories since 2011. Before moving to the social beat, Ojha covered arts and culture for the Post for four years.
9.89°C Kathmandu.jpg)
