Heaps of garbage, stagnant water raise stink at Singhu

Parveen Arora

Tribune News Service

Sonepat, December 11

Heaps of garbage and stagnant water near the Singhu border, where thousands of farmers have been protesting against the three controversial farm laws for two weeks, are posing a sanitation problem, which, protesters fear, will lead to an outbreak of diseases.

Pieces of orange and banana peels, plastic and paper glasses and plates, and food waste are piling up at various places, causing inconvenience to protesters.

This is not all. Dirty toilets and stagnant water are raising a stench. The protesters claimed toilets had not been cleaned for nearly a week. Ask protesters and they blame the district administration for the sorry state of affairs.

“Sanitation employees do not clean the site regularly. Garbage has not been lifted for days and the drainage system is poor. All in all, the situation is bad,” said Ajyab Singh, a farmer.

Another farmer Narinder Singh said the district administration should deploy more sanitation employees at the site. “If the administration doesn’t get serious, the unsanitary conditions will lead to outbreak of diseases.”

“The few mobile toilets that have been stationed near the protest site are dirty, forcing the farmers to relieve themselves in the open,” one of the farmers said, adding some farmers took it upon themselves to clean the toilets.