At Rs80 per litre, the Kathmandu Metropolitan City office spends Rs6,400 per day on diesel, just to operate its five broomer machines. But efforts to clean the dusty roads are in vain because of the on-again, off-again road construction at various parts of the city. The consumption of diesel meanwhile adds to the already hazardous levels of air pollution.

“Despite all our efforts we haven’t been able to keep our roads clean,” said Environment Division chief Hari Kumar Shrestha. “The ongoing road widening and installation of pipelines by the Melamchi Water Project makes it impossible to do that.”

In the past 39 days, the Mayor’s office has already spent Rs249,600 on diesel. Additionally, an annual budget of Rs2.7 million has been set aside for human resources required to operate the broomer machines.

According to Shrestha, a total of 20 people—five drivers, five assistants, five metro police officers and a five-member inspection team—have been assigned with the task of cleaning the dusty Kathmandu roads for eight hours every night.

But operating the broomer machines without mitigating primary sources of dust, experts say, would only add to the carbon footprint of the Mayor’s office and throw taxpayers’ millions down the drain.

Senior divisional engineer at the Department of Roads Dip Barahai said the metropolitan office should first work to asphalt the inner roads that are under its jurisdiction.

The metropolis has a total of 1,400km of road network, of which 1,200 km are less than eight metres wide, which falls under the Mayor’s jurisdiction. The remaining 200 km with widths above eight metres fall under the jurisdiction of the Department of Roads.

“Only last week, we had a meeting with the metropolitan office when we pointed out that the inner roads are the main cause of dust,” Barahai said.

But Ishwor Man Dangol, spokesperson for the Mayor’s office, insists that the department and the Melamchi Water Project should first repair the roads before they could be made dust free. “We are working in coordination with them but they put forth their own obligations,” he said.

For over a month now, the broomer machines have been in operation every night from 8pm to 4am but it isn’t without controversies.

In the first three weeks of its operation, the Mayor’s office had been criticised for operating the broomer machines only on V/VIP roads instead of the five routes that had been announced when Mayor Bidya Sundar Shakya inaugurated an event which unveiled five Dulevo-6000 machines procured from Italy at the cost of Rs108 million.

Each Dulevo 6000 can hold up to 500 litres of water and can clean 25,000 square metres in an hour. Its maximum speed is 42km per hour.