Tirupati: Sanitary staff slogging to fight Covid, waste collection takes a backseat

Tirupati: Lockdown is causing inconvenience in many ways to the general public, but it saw considerable decrease in waste generation in the pilgrim city.

About 220 tonne waste including wet and solid waste used to be generated daily in the city but now it has come down to 165-170 tonne mainly due to the closure of hotels, shops, educational institutions and the hostels attached to them and also private hostels.

It is needless to say that the number of hotels and shops are more in the city than anywhere in the state due to floating population since nearly one lakh pilgrims used to visit the city to have darshan of Lord Venkateswara. But the suspension of darshan for the public from March 20 has reduced the waste generation.

Interestingly, the reduction in the waste generation gave no relief to the sanitation staff and in fact they are in stress as the workload has increased manifold for them due to massive cleaning exercise taken up all over the city after the deadly Covid-19 stared spreading.

A 50 member `rapid action team' was set up to take up intense sanitation in select areas. A total of 1,050 health staff including outsourcing and regular employees are working in the Municipal Corporation of Tirupati (MCT).

Declaring 12 divisions against the total 50 in the city as `red zone' adding more to the burden of sanitation staff who are slogging more hours than the usual work time to cope with increased workload.

Senior sanitary supervisor Govardhan said that upkeep of all the streets, roads, desilting and maintenance of drains, spraying bleaching powder and also transport of the waste to the dump yard are being taken up daily while in the areas coming under `red zone' additional works also to be taken up by the health and sanitation wing as per the standards by the Union Ministry of Health, he explained.