Newly merged area of Una Municipal Corporation sans waste management facilities

The Una Municipal Committee (MC) was upgraded to the Municipal Corporation around a year ago with the incorporation of 14 adjoining panchayats into the city limits. However, the state of sanitation in the newly merged areas has turned from bad to worse since the panchayat bodies have been disbanded in these areas, while the MC authorities neither have funds and resources, nor have devised any plans for the proper management of tonnes of waste being generated at the household level every day.

New dumping grounds have begun to come up, posing health hazards besides turning the area into an eyesore. Dumping grounds have also come up along the highway heading from Chandigarh to Dharamsala passing through Una city.

According to information obtained from the Una MC, the old city area, which was under the Municipal Committee, has 11 wards, each having around eight sanitation workers for maintaining cleanliness, collect garbage from households and transporting it to the designated dumping site in Rampur village, now a part of the Una Municipal Corporation.

A private firm from Panchkula — Suntan Life Pvt Ltd — has been awarded the sanitation contract for the old city. The company has employed 85 persons to cover the 11 wards, besides managing and processing waste.

Vijay Kumar, Sanitary Supervisor of the Una MC, informed that around 14 vehicles collect waste from old Una city on a daily basis. The monthly quantity of garbage ferried to the waste management facility in Rampur was around 300 metric tonnes, he said. The private firm gets a fixed amount from the MC to process per metric tonnes of waste, he said.

Reliable sources, unwilling to be named said, “Presently, the Rampur facility does not have fully functional machinery, due to which biodegradable and non-degradable waste materials are not being managed properly. Under such circumstances, if waste material from the newly merged areas is also transported to this facility, there will be a complete breakdown of the system as per the present scenario.”

The Una MC reportedly is now paying Rs 14 lakh per year to the firm for managing waste generated in the old city. This amount is likely to swell to Rs 40 lakh to cover the present MC area.

When contacted, Una MC Joint Commissioner Manoj Kumar admitted that as of now, there was no permanent plan in place for disposal of solid waste in the newly merged areas. He said as against the 5 square kilometre area of the old MC, the new civic body had an area of 40 square kilometre. He said recently, the MC authorities had launched an exercise to clear waste from some of the existing illegal dumping areas and installed sign boards which displayed information about Rs 5,000 penalty on those disposing of garbage illegally.

Manoj Kumar said after a few days, garbage was seen piled at these sites, turning them into an eyesore for the public. He informed that the MC had acquired land adjacent to the Rampur waste management site in view of the city’s expansion requirements.

He, however, said the sanitation manpower, vehicles and other equipment would have to be upgraded and working of the Rampur site too had to be streamlined to serve the newly merged areas of the Una MC.