Garbage collection a tough task for Vizianagaram

Vizianagaram: Providing basic amenities like drinking water, laying of roads, installing street lights and maintaining parks are basic duties of municipalities. 

But most of the civic bodies are doing these works for some extent but collection of garbage and maintaining sanitation are major task for them. Though the municipal administration is according top priority to garbage management, they could not achieve good results in this regard.Vizianagaram town has  2.50 lakh population and 61,925 houses in 40 municipal wards.

The small town has around 80 slum areas like Jonnaguddi, Bogguladibba, BC colony, YSR Nagar and some others where more than half of the population is living.  But the administration is struggling to maintain hygiene in the streets.

During the rainy season, most of the low-lying areas are being submerged as the drainages are overflowing.  As per estimation, the town is producing 75 tonnes of garbage daily.

The people are dumping their domestic waste either on roads or in their colonies instead of dumping in the dustbins. Though the municipal authorities are creating awareness among people on maintaining cleanliness on the streets but it fell on deaf ears. 

They distributed coloured dustbins to every shop in the town. Green dustbin for wet waste and blue bin for dry waste but the shop keepers, traders, small hoteliers and café owners are not using them properly. 

It is learnt that streets have been deprived of big roadside dustbins to facilitate the public to dump their domestic waste. Hence, garbage mounds can be witnessed at the end of every street as the locals are dumping the waste as they can’t find a big municipal dustbin there.

Though the municipality is maintaining the contract staff to collect the garbage from door to door, they are not visiting the streets, colonies regularly. Some of the workers are reluctant to collect the garbage from the houses and apartments if they won’t get monthly tips. 

K Vijaya, a resident of Balaji Nagar, said: “The workers are not coming to our colony regularly to collect garbage. So, we are packing the waste in polythene bags and dropping at the end of our colony as there is no big dust bin”. 

P Ramakrishna, municipal chairperson, said: “Yes garbage collection is a big task for us. Some colonies don’t have big dust bins and the people are dumping the garbage on the roadside. Now, we are planning to purchase big dustbins by spending Rs 20 lakhs.

We want to see clean Vizianagaram in the ensuing rainy season. We instructed the workers to visit every colony and collect the garbage without fail”.