Kathmandu, Mar. 10: Danish Charge D’Affaires Lars Hormann met with Minister of State for Population and Environment Bhakta Bahadur Balayar at the latter’s office today.

On the occasion, discussion was held on improving the environment of Kathmandu Valley and other districts.

Mr Hormann welcomed the government’s decision to ban the operation of government, corporation and diplomatic vehicles if they fail to meet the fixed criteria in Kathmandu Valley.

Mr Balayar thanked the Danish government for providing equipment necessary for checking pollution caused by vehicles.

An agreement was also reached on the occasion to train manpower needed for effectively advancing the programme launched for maintaining pollution level and to collect necessary resources for this.

The meeting also agreed that a study will be carried out with the help of Danish government to assess the environmental impact of plastic products and discourage its production, export and import of such products, while at the same encouraging their recycling.

The discussion also focussed on minimising the level of smoke pollution caused by Himal Cement Factory and brick kilns.

The Danish government is to invest Danish Kroner 20.261 million for such programmes as ensuring the institutionalised development of environmental bodies, maintaining coordination between the ministries and the private sector, raising public awareness, managing environmental conservation fund, etc under component no. 4 of the environmental sector programme support project.

Working out of the component No. 5 of the project aimed at monitoring and improving pollution level in Kathmandu Valley has come to a final stage.

Present on the occasion were secretary at the Ministry of Population and Environment Dr Govinda Raj Bhatta, joint secretary Ananta Raj Pandey, the chief advisor of the programme, the technical advisor and programme officer at the Danish Embassy Sharad Neupane.