The lack of regular collection and disposal of garbage along with the level of civic sanitation in Dehradun dominated proceedings in the board meeting of the Dehradun municipal corporation here on Tuesday. Some of the board members belonging to both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress raised ruckus complaining about the absence of regularity in the door to door collection of garbage and deteriorated level of civic sanitation in town.
The meeting marked by noisy arguments also saw vociferous expression of civic complaints by one of the councilors to such an extent that the mayor Vinod Chamoli had to resort to directing municipal personnel to escort the councilor out of the board meeting room.
The board meeting of the municipal corporation began with two minutes of silence being observed in remembrance of the current councilor of Kaulagarh, Ganga Khsetri and former councilor Ramu Pandey who had expired during the period since the previous board meet. The silence ended swiftly as councilors of different wards began complaining about irregularity in collection of garbage from their wards.
As seen on various occasions in past board meetings, the councilors focused on lambasting the corporation’s civic sanitation staff and other officials for varied factors resulting in the deteriorated level of civic sanitation in the city. They also repeated their complaint about being at the receiving end of the complaints of the public due to failure of the authorities to maintain the desired level of civic sanitation. The mayor Vinod Chamoli managed to pacify the councilors and stated that the needful would be worked towards in order to resolve the problem being faced. During the verification of the status of issues discussed in the previous board meeting, the proposal to raise the amount of user charges for garbage collection from Rs 40 to Rs 50 once again elicited noisy objection from some of the councilors. They complained that garbage was not being lifted regularly from the municipal garbage containers while the door to door collection was also not being conducted regularly. The proposal for increasing the monthly user charges for door to door collection of garbage from Rs 40 to Rs 50 was also approved in the meeting. It was stated that such problems were expected to be resolved in the coming months. Meanwhile, the MKP ward councilor Arun Khanna complained about issues pertaining to his ward in a noisy manner. The mayor first attempted to pacify the vociferous councilor but in vain and then directed the municipal personnel to take Khanna out of the board meeting room for not observing the necessary level of official decorum. This again elicited noisy objection from the councilor who then left the board room on his own.