Bharatpur's municipal council has declared the flood's aftermath a routine hygiene matter, ordering every riverbank within city limits to be swept twice daily by sanitation crews equipped with rakes, industrial bags, and a new fleet of flatbed trolleys painted in the city's official green.
The council's sanitation director, Gopal Thapa, said the measure was necessary to keep the riverfront presentable for the upcoming tourist season. «We treat every item the river leaves behind exactly as we treat a discarded wrapper or a fallen leaf,» Thapa said. «It goes into the bag, it gets weighed at the depot, and the weight is recorded in the daily log. There is no difference in procedure.»
Crews have been divided into three shifts, each covering the same stretch of bank twice, once at dawn and once at dusk. The trolleys, each fitted with a brass bell to announce their approach, have already made their first circuits, and the council has ordered the construction of a second depot to handle the volume. Residents near the river report that the bells have become the new neighborhood clock.
The council has also issued a uniform for the crews, a high-visibility vest with the slogan «Clean Banks, Clean City» printed on the back, and has scheduled a weekly inspection by the deputy mayor, who will walk the entire riverfront with a clipboard and a measuring tape to confirm that no stretch has been missed. Next month, the council plans to extend the sweep to the tributaries that feed the river, arguing that a city cannot claim to be clean if its water arrives dirty.