Breathless Kathmandu gasps for tourist revenues

There was a time, and not so long ago, when people of Kathmandu could breathe.

Then, the green valley was unspoilt, the snowcapped mountains ringing it were distinctly visible, and the city air was achingly fresh and clean.

Then, respiratory diseases were as good as fiction and a small population lived in complete peace and harmony here, enjoying the gentle warmth of sun-filled Himalayan winters and the pleasant coolness of its summers.

That, folks, was in the seventies. The eighties and nineties have a different story to tell.

Today, the Nepali capital has changed enormously to become a most polluted, traffic- clogged, urban sprawl. Another New Delhi.

Once famous for its natural beauty, it has turned into an urban slum, ever enveloped in a haze of dust, which cannot provide even clean drinking water to its citizens.

Kathmandu is paying the price for ill-planned economic growth and urbanisation.

A rapid increase in urban population during the last one and a half decades, the accompanying rise in vehicular traffic coupled with the proliferation of polluting industries and brick kilns have led to great deterioration in the city's air quality. Now, chest and respiratory diseases are a major health hazard.

''Our economic growth has come at a great cost,'' admits Umesh Bahadur Malla, a joint secretary at the ministry of housing and physical planning.

Government statistics show that between 1980 and 1990, the Kathmandu population has swelled by 44 per cent, mainly due to an influx of migrant workers from the rural areas. The need to provide them with housing fuelled a building boom, another source of pollution. There are some 300 polluting brick kilns in the Kathmandu valley alone.

''The city has become one of the most dangerous cities to live in by health standards,'' says Dr Sanjay Lakhey, a general physician. ''The deteriorating air quality and drinking water facilities are why we are getting more cases of asthma and bronchitis, and typhoid and hepatitis.''

Most people live in crowded tenements, even six people to a room, sharing kitchens and bathrooms. Two years ago, the city was plagued by huge power cuts and water shortage, as demand outstripped supply.

An urban air quality management in Asia study says that in 1993, factories, vehicles and other polluters emitted 16,565 tonnes of suspended particles, 4,712 tonnes of particulates of 10 micron size or less and 615 tonnes of sulphur dioxide gas. At some places in the valley, the level of such pollutants were 10 times higher than the limits set by the World Health Organisation.

The visible deterioration of air quality also has another fallout -- international tourism, which brings $ 60 million to the country annually, has been severely affected. Estimates have it that the environmental deterioration costs Nepal tourism nearly Rs 500 million every year.

UNI