The mega clean-awareness campaign ‘Srestha Brahmapur’ seems to have failed in the silk city. The drive of beautification and cleanliness of this city remains confined to speeches and entertainment, rather than any tangible action on ground.
The sixth phase of ‘Srestha Brahmapur Karyakram’ was held here recently along with the celebration of 150th year of completion of Berhampur Municipal Corporation (BMC) on the eve of “Swayat Sasan Divas” in the Khallikote College Square.
The mega cleaning programme with a slogan “My city, my responsibility’ was launched by the BMC in the Khallikote College Square earlier this month with a plan to continue the drive for 3 months from 5.30 am to 5.30 pm every day on eight different topics of citizens’ importanceincluding sanitation, green city, beautification, save-water, safe-commuting, responsible citizen, public health and the future citizen on every Sunday with an intention to sensitize the public, according to the BMC Commissioner.
The denizens were also administered oath under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan for keeping the city clean.
However, all these big words, assurance, and slogans seem to have remained a hoax, as nothing changed on the ground, said a senior citizen on ground of anonymity.
According to many denizens, the programme was confined to some main roads of selective wards in the city, but not to the interior streets and lanes of the city. Areas like Bijipur tank road, the different lanes of Gandhinagar posh locality, Gate Bazar, Khallasi street and several such areas are the best examples of negligence, said a teacher. The high sounding slogans of BMC to make garbage free remained hoax. The drains are packed up with solid wastes and the city is full of debris on both sides of the road. The entire city is also left muddy.
Auditing or inspections on such issues like sanitation and cleanliness remain superficial and confined to a few main roads only, alleged a senior citizen.
On the eve of celebration of the completion of 150 years of the existence of BMC, the speakers tried to compete each other in taking credit that, out of 500 ‘AMRUT cities identified in the country based on cleanliness, the silk city Brahmapur ranks 102 and urged upon the audience to become more proactive and work collectively to make this city best. On the eve of this ‘Swayat Sasan Divas’ winners of sixteen competitions held for the purpose were awarded prizes. Similarly, a run was held starting from the Nehru Park via Ramalingam tank-Kamapalli square-Gate Bazar in which hundreds of school students participated.
To entertain the public, a cultural show was organized in which the known play-back singer of Olywood Sreejata Upadhya and Ashutosh Mohanty sang songs which the youths enjoyed with clapping. Among others, the artists of a band of cultural groups, namely, Angahar Nrutyan, Rockstar dance group, liana School of dance, DDS Dance Group, sand artists of Satya Moharana Group performed their talent.
In this mega show, Brahmapur MlA RC Chyau Pattnaik and Gopalpur MlA Pradip Kumar Panigrahi joined as chief guest. Among others, BMC Mayor K Madhavi, Deputy Mayor Jyoshna Nayak, BMC Commissioner Nikhil Pawan Kalyan, Deputy Commissioner Saurindra Kumar Routray and District Education Officer Sanatan Panda along with a galaxy of Corporators were present.