President of the Gandhinagar Senior Citizens’ Forum and social worker Prof KC Panda has demanded that the private firms be not assigned sanitation and power supply maintenance work by the Brahmapur Municipal Corporation (BeMC).

Most of the private agencies to which the sanitation and electrical maintenance work of the city has been given are openly cheating the denizens and looting crores of rupees from the public exchequer with no one made accountable. He demanded stringent action against the firm as well as the BeMC administration for paying deaf ears to tax payers’ demand, Panda alleged.

The condition of roads and drains of Gandhinagar are packed with solid wastes, soils, garbage to which the BeMC has lent a deaf ear. The debris and construction materials are being dumped on the drains as well as on the public road covering 50 per cent of the space which surprisingly goes unnoticed by the BeMC.

The contractors pay attention to the main roads just for an eye wash and to appease the BeMC authorities, where as the interior lanes/streets of the Gandhinagar goes unattended. Even some denizens have used public road openly as cow shed in Gandhinagar causing inconvenience to the public. Several representations, telephone calls, complaints to the BeMC remain unheeded apparently owing to their nexus with the contractors, charged Panda.

 In spite of the media reports and repeated complaints, neither the BeMC Commissioner nor the Health Officer has ever visited the site to address the public grievances. Some local public, mostly senior citizens, apprehending threat perceptions do not dare file complaints before the BeMC knowing well that their demand will remain unheeded. The local public taking advantage of vacant/open plots dump garbageand other waste materials on such open plots polluting the entire environment and helping to breed mosquitoes in the area.

Similarly, the day to day electrical maintenance work of the area has been utterly poor since the work has been given to a Delhi-based private firm Neev Energy.  The electrical section of the BeMC which was functioning more effectively has totally become defunct.

Notably, a group of senior citizens led by Prof Panda submitted a complaint to BeMC on1April 12 with a request to rectify two street-light points of Gandhinagar 3rd Lane Extension (West) which are defunct since last three weeks. When this

correspondent  asked Neev Energy Odisha head Somya over telephone in order to ascertain the reason for delay in making the street lights functional, he replied that the State Urban

Development Department has withheld around Rs 1.5 crore for which we are not able to carry out our work promptly and assured to resolve the issue in a day.

According to information available, the State UD Department represented by BeMC entered in to an agreement with the Neev Energy since January 2018for day to day electrical maintenance work initially for 7,000 light points which was subsequently increased to 12,000 light points. Due to some controversy and lack of specificity on the mode of work procedure, the UD Department has reportedly withheld the payment to the firm for which the firm is not able to carry out the work, sources said.

Likewise, every day senior citizens go with a complaint to make their light points functional but there is no one to address their grievances.  The senior citizens of the area have demanded that, the BeMC administration be made accountable for such maintenance lapses.