Polluters Pay in Kathmandu Valley

KATHMANDU: Polluters in Kathmandu Valley will no longer go unpunished, from Tuesday onward. They are subject to a tax as punishment, albeit small in amount. Diesel and petrol-run vehicles plying in the Valley are now required to pay 50 paisa per liter of fuel as pollution tax from Tuesday, a move hailed by environmentalists as a step toward making the polluter pays principle a reality in Nepal. [break]



“Nepal Oil Corporation collects the pollution tax from today [Tuesday] and deposits it in the account opened by the Finance Ministry,” said Laxman Prasad Mainali, spokesperson at the Ministry of Environment, Science and Technology.



Nepalese environmentalists have long been demanding such a tax in view of deteriorating air quality in Kathmandu. Even in the past successive governments had promised to address the environmentalists’ demand and mentioned this in their annual budgets. But no past government had dared to actually levy the tax in view of possible public resistance.



According to national and international reports, Kathmandu’s air contains much higher PM10 (fine dust particles) than the national air quality standard. According to the national standard, the level of PM10 should not exceed 120 micron. Anything above the national standard is considered hazardous to human health.



The tax was promised in the budget of the current fiscal year and the cabinet last month decided to make the tax effective from Tuesday through a notice in the gazette.



“Since the last 10 years there have been promises to levy a tax on polluters but these were not lived up to. It is a good beginning that the promise has been translated into action this time,” Bhusan Tuladhar, an environmentalist, said.



Tuladhar, however, said that the tax is too low and asked the government to increase it to Rs 1 and levy the tax even outside Kathmandu.



“The government should now identify and categorize the areas where the collected tax should be spent. Similarly, the government should also develop a mechanism to ensure that the tax is not misused,” he said.



In the meantime, Mainali said that his ministry would work with officials from the Finance Ministry to develop a plan to utilize the pollution tax.



Mukund Dhungel, spokesperson of Nepal Oil Corporation, said that the consumption of petrol and diesel in the Valley was 4,857,000 liters and 8,060,000 liters respectively last month.



It is a general trend in developed and industrialized countries to levy a pollution tax as per the universal principle of polluter pays, according to environmentalist Tuladhar. The principle means that polluters should also be responsible for paying for the damage done to the natural environment, according to Wikipedia.

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