Swachh city dream remains distant

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, February 19

City residents need to be highly courageous and optimistic if they expect their locality to be clean and beautiful, especially when the ground reality points to sites that are disappointing and upsetting.

How clean would be the other areas in the city when piles of garbage were seen near MLA Sarup Chand Singla’s house?

People complained of reek emanating from the site.

The city was the first in the state to rope in a private company to collect and transport garbage.

But the scheme seems to have failed in maintaining hygiene and living up to the expectations of residents.

JITF Urban Infrastructure Limited was assigned the job of garbage collection in the city.

Many complaints have poured in that garbage is not collected every day by employees of the company.

The JITF has 355 garbage collectors, of which 242 are those who have a rickshaw and collect garbage door-to-door from 46,000 households in the city.

The major factors that hampered the garbage collection are low wages of the sweepers of the private company, lack of monitoring and no accountability.

Jaspal Singh, a city resident, said he felt that the MCB should get strict with people by penalising the owners of vacant plots where garbage was dumped.

He also urged the MCB to improve the cleanliness work in the city as there are many areas where garbage remained littered and people had to pass by, with their nose covered.

Amisha, another city resident, said, “We can’t keep blaming the authorities for not maintaining cleanliness. We will have to take the initiative to change our habits and keep the city clean like our homes. The door-to-door campaign is going good but street sweepers are to be blamed for not doing their jobs regularly to keep the city clean.”

Mitul Jindal said, “The Swachh Bharat Abhiyan was a great drive started by the government for creating awareness among people about cleanliness. But the administration has forgotten it after initiating it with such grand fanfare. This drive should go on and every citizen should follow it.”