Who will clean Phagwara? Heaps of garbage, choked drainage plague civic body

Though the Phagwara Municipal Corporation was formed with 50 wards on July 29, 2011, even after 13 years of its formation, more than 60 per cent streetlight points out of the total 14,900 are still non-working and 15 per cent of the area in the city is still deprived of the basic sewerage facility.

Though there are three sewage treatment plants (STPs) of 36 million litres per day (MLD) capacity, residents of Hajipur, Gaunspur, Hoshiarpur Road and Khalwara Road areas are still devoid of a well-connected sewerage system. Residents of the city, including Gaushala Bazaar, Old Dana Mandi and Patel Nagar, too face waterlogging, especially in monsoons, as there is no mechanism for drainage. People have been demanding a proper system to resolve their problem.

There is no proper mechanism for lifting of garbage in the city as heaps of waste can be witnessed at several places daily, especially on the Old Post Office road. Anyone passing by has to cover his nose to escape the foul smell.

MC poll delayed by four years

• According to the last Census, Phagwara has a population of 1,37,581 residing in 39,376 houses.
• But residents of only 23,535 houses have water connections. About 86 per cent of the area has been provided the sewerage network.
• The elections for the Phagwara Municipal Corporation were due in 2020 but have got delayed by over four years.
• Satish Kumar Singla was the first Commissioner of the MC.
• The first elected MC House came to power in February 2015 and BJP leader Arun Khosla was then elected its first Mayor.

Potholed roads in several parts of the MC area are another cause of inconvenience for the people. The water supply in Phagwara is based on tubewells and people are looking for alternative schemes like those of surface water as being introduced in Jalandhar and other big metro cities.

SDO, Water Supply and Sewerage Board, Pardeep Chottani claimed that the water supply was being provided in more than 90 per cent localities of Phagwara. Over lack of civic amenities, MC Commissioner Navneet Bal said the shortage of the staff in the MC needed to be sorted out. “We are trying to push the available manpower to redress the grievances of the people”, she added.