Mir Alam STP entrance reeks of official apathy

Rajendranagar: The flora and fauna inside the Mir Alam Sewerage Treatment Plant (STP) might soothe your eyes for a moment, but the outer view of the facility, especially its facet, would definitely let you down completely. With the sight of overflowing garbage bin and parked rusty trucks at the main entrance, the entire ambience of the STP represent an ugly side of the otherwise beautiful park inside the facility.

Though the inside open area of the STP is built up with a rich and ravishing flora but the outside unhygienic ambience with heaps of garbage and lining up of old garbage trucks completely cover the main entrance and the glimpse of the beautiful inside facility.

Close to the entrance, there is a bus stop where one can see a bunch of passengers waiting to board the buses. Heaps of garbage occupies a major portion of the entrance causing inconvenience to the people, bystanders and the passengers as the stink emanating from the filth fills the air with foul smell all the time.

Shopkeepers and the locals, not to mention the wayfarers, throw the garbage bags from a distance towards the dust bins kept at park entrance. This results in garbage strewn on the road and with sanitation workers not clearing waste on schedule heaps of garbage accumulates. The passengers are forced to cover their noses to protect themselves from the unbearable foul smell emanating from the garbage strewn on the road.

The STP that spreads around 6 acres has a treatment capacity of 10 million litres per day. Upon treating, the water is released into Mir Alam Tank under whose banks the treatment facility is being operational. "Recently it was decided to supply the water to Nehru Zoological Park which is located adjacent to the facility. A survey in this regard was done recently and the supply of treated water to Zoo Park will resume soon," informed plant in-charge Rajashekar. It has been proposed to establish another plant of 50 million litre, but it has been pending for a long time. The facility is being run by RAMKY Company on a contractual basis under the direct supervision of HMWS&SB, he added."

Though the STP near Miralam Lake has been operational for quite some time, there are many deserving municipality-approved residential layouts like Shastripuram Colony which have been lingering without any sewer or drain lines till date. The existing STP case study if successful should have been replicated as a "good practice" and similar projects should be extended to sewer-less colonies like Shastripuram by GHMC," said Mohd Asif, a resident of Shastripuram and a software engineer by profession.