Portable toilets, gas pipelines on agenda

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, September 25

The agenda has been released for the upcoming House meeting of the Municipal Corporation (MC), Jalandhar, scheduled to be held on September 28.

A proposal has been given for laying gas pipelines in the city to develop the city gas distribution system. The lines will be laid by the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board (PNGRB).

The areas which have been covered under the proposal start from 66-Feet Road to Urban Estate, Phase II market, to Gurudwara Sahib Urban Estate, Phase 1, reaching Bank of Maharashtra, and then continuing from the bank towards Reliance Mall, Dashmesh Nagar, reaching PAP Chowk via Defence Colony and BSF Chowk.

For the laying of the gas pipeline, restoration charges, annual rent, and security deposit will be taken.

There is another proposal to build portable toilets under the Swachh Bharat Mission. Under the proposal, it is said the need for a single-seater portable toilet was there which must be installed at 10 places. Each seat will cost Rs 50,000. Besides, another plan is to install underground bins where the collected waste from wards could be thrown. In many wards, there is a place to throw the waste at secondary collection points and the problem is grave in inner areas that is why the proposal is being given. This project is already being run in cities such as Dharamsala and Panchkula.

Also, with the stopping of the sweeping machine project, the proposal has been given to recruit more safai karamcharis. It has been mentioned in the agenda that after workers who were given the contract under the project stopped the work, it is getting difficult to clean main roads as for the main roads, measuring 48.5 km, around 50 safai karamcharis are required.

Rohan Sehgal, councillor, Ward No. 26, has also given the proposal that the PSPCL must provide electricity for street lighting without taking any profit as it was charging the corporation at commercial rates.

He said the corporation pays Rs 20 crore every year to the PSPCL, hence a resolution must be passed in the House that the PSPCL must consider them a bulk consumer.

In one of the proposals made in the agenda, it is said the corporation did not have a centralised waste processing plant due to which 500 tonnes of waste are getting dumped at the single site in Wariana, which is leading to non-management of the waste, for which it has been proposed that a biomining project be installed for the Wariana dump. For biomining of one lakh cubic meter of waste, Rs 10 crore will be spent and it will help solve the problem.

The House is headed by Mayor Jagdish Raja with a majority of the Congress councillors, who are 64 in number.