“Every other day, individuals and organizations come with trucks to dump their garbage at night. At least one truck gets unloaded everyday,” said local resident Ye. Gantumur.

The cemetery’s guard, who lives onsite and spoke on condition of anonymity, said those responsible for the garbage don’t pay attention to the law.

“I have warned the people who bring garbage many times, but they always ignore me,” he said.

The waste, mainly consisting of construction materials, broken bottles, livestock carcasses and old car frames is strewn along a 300 meter long side of the cemetery. Some local residents also stated that people go through the garbage to find useful items.

“Most of the garbage is useless. But sometimes I can find some things that could be useful for our home. Cans and bottles are what we really need, but those are not dumped here. Normally only very bad trash is left,” G. Lhagvadorj, a local resident, told MonInfo while picking up trash Wednesday morning.

However some residents of the surrounding ger districts feel like those living within the cemetery also generate trash, and say not all blame can be placed on the trucks.

“There wasn’t as much garbage before when fewer people lived in the area,” said E. Herlen, a resident who said she has been living in the area for more than a decade.

“People, who live here largely, contribute to forming a big amount of trash. They dump their garbage here, as though it was a dumping area.”

The government bodies responsible for the garbage collection in the areas said it was unclear under what jurisdiction the cemetery lies.

“The 7th and 8th sub-districts are independent and responsible for this cemetery. They collect money from residents and use it for cleaning garbage. Thus these sub-districts should be cleaning the area when someone dumps garbage,” an official at the Urbanization department of Chingeltei district said in an interview.

Yet residents and sub-district workers said the district should still be responsible, even with their independent status, and had no plans to organize clean ups.