Hoshiarpur faces garbage woes due to shortage of workers

Despite the Municipal Corporation’s claim of making efforts to keep the city clean, piles of garbage can be seen at several places in Hoshiarpur. An acute shortage of sanitation workers is one of the reasons behind the lack of proper cleaning.

There are over 700 beats in the city and at least one sanitation worker is required one beat that stretches for 1 km. There are only 420 sanitation workers for over 700 beats. Around 250 sanitation workers have regular jobs, while the remaining are either hired on the DC rates or employed under an outsourcing arrangement. A total of 196 sanitation workers were hired some time ago, but 34 of them have left the job. No regular recruitment of sanitation workers has been done since 2012. Owing to the staff shortage, each sanitation worker is looking after two beats and some even more than two.

Whenever there’s a government function or programme in the city, the sanitation workers are overburdened. For government functions or VIP movement they are removed from their beats temporarily and put on special duty. Garbage in their respective beats keeps piling and on returning to the routine duty they have to clean the mess.

The city residents, too, are responsible to some extent for the garbage menace. Hundreds of vacant plots in the city have turned into garbage dumps. On February 19, the MC had issued instructions to owners to raise boundary walls or fence around vacant plots to check the practice of garbage dumping.

Instructions were issued to the owners of vacant plots that they should either raise boundary walls or fence the plots within seven days so that no one can throw garbage in these plots. It was said that after seven days if the MC team found any plot without wall or fence, the team will collect cleaning charges from the owner and penalty due on him will be clubbed with the property tax. Besides, the no-objection certificate (NOC) for the plot will also be stopped, the order said. However, three weeks have passed, but no checks in this regard have been conducted.

There were four garbage dump yards in the city. More than a year ago, the corporation decided to remove the dump yards. However, even after a year only dump yards from Model Town and Food Street have been removed. The garbage dumps at Bahadurpur and near DAV College are still causing inconvenience of people. Residents rue that smell emanating from the dump yards has made life hell for them. Manmohan Singh, State Secretary of Shiv Sena (UBT), a resident of the Ganja School area, said, “We have been complaining for a long time, but have only got false assurance.” He said if the dump was not removed soon he will be start a hunger strike.