The Supreme Court has issued an interim order against the Kathmandu Metropolitan City ordering the latter to resume collecting waste from Singhadurbar and a few other places from where the City has halted waste collection for over a week.

Hearing on a petition filed by advocate Padam Bahadur Shrestha, a single bench of Justice Prakashman Singh Raut, on Friday, ordered the KMC to resume collection and disposal of waste from Singhadurbar, Office of the President at Sheetal Niwas, and Office of the Prime Minister.

The apex court has also given an ultimatum of three days to the metropolis to comply with the court order.

“The court hereby issues an interim order against the Kathmandu Metropolitan City to resume waste collection, and proper disposal, from the areas mentioned by the plaintiff in his petition within three days from the issue of the order,” reads the court order.

On April 9, Mayor Balendra Shah had announced that KMC would stop collecting garbage from Singha Durbar and other VIP areas such as the Office of the President at Sheetal Niwas and prime minister’s residence at Baluwatar.

Announcing the decision on his Facebook page, Mayor Shah had said that the move was made “not on a whim” but was rather as a result of the “continuous neglect, lack of responsibility and carelessness shown by the federal government”.

Meanwhile, local units that host landfills where Kathmandu’s waste is dumped have threatened to stop garbage disposal.

Dhunibesi Municipality and Kakani Rural Municipality have threatened to bar KMC’s garbage trucks from dumping garbage if the agreement they reached with the KMC on June 6 last year is not implemented.

The two local units have given the KMC 15 days to implement the agreement.