The World Bank (WB) Nepal office has denied a recent news report that placed Kathmandu on the top of the 17 Asian cities with the dirtiest air, saying, the WB did not come up with any report like that, the Kathmandu Post said Wednesday.

The daily, quoting a senior WB official, said, the Associated Press (AP) report datelined December 18 and filed from Manila, the Philippines, “misrepresented” what was said and presented at a workshop on Better Air Quality.

“The press picked up the pollution data presented at the workshop out of context and made its own judgment,” the daily quoted Asif Faiz, WB’s Acting Country Representative to Nepal, as saying.

“The AP report misrepresented what the presenters at the conference including what Christopher Hoban, Acting Country Director of the World Bank in the Philippines, said during the conference,” Faiz said.

The organiser of the workshop, the Clean Air Initiative for Asian Cities, an Asian Development Bank-supported project has informed the World Bank that it would soon write to concerned media organisations for correction of the misrepresented news report, he said.

Aside from AP, the Asian Wall Street Journal also ran the report, which created a furor in Nepal, the daily said.

Kathmandu’s Mayor Keshav Sthapit last week sought explanations and publicly announced that he would sue the Bank for bad publicity of the city, according to the daily. nepalnews.com mr Dec 31