For an initiative named worthy of being followed by other cities by the State’s Chief Minister himself, Ranchi Municipal Corporation’s (RMC) decision to clean the major streets of the city in the hours of darkness has been a let down in terms of achieving its goals.
It’s been five months since RMC rescheduled its waste collection activities to night-time, with dual objectives of presenting a cleaner Ranchi to its denizens when they wake up and to do away with the bottlenecks garbage trucks posed to the traffic as they picked up garbage from street-sides during rush hour. But the urban local body is still far from achieving any of the two goals in entirety, as neither garbage strewn streets nor garbage cars riddling the already congested traffic of the city have become a thing of the past.
When questioned, cold nights were cited as reasons by the RMC functionaries behind inability of cleaners to collect garbage in the night shift.
“Very low temperatures in the late hours stop our workers from going on around the city collecting garbage in the night time. We don’t want them to fall sick due to the cold. We cannot afford that as RMC already is facing a lack of funds and capable hands,” stated Mayor Asha lakra.
Due to cold nights, the garbage collection is done only till 8:00 pm, where it was supposed to go on for the whole night, till the marked streets are cleaned. The entire city was divided in four zones, with a total of 15 trash cars and 30 helpers tasked with cleaning the city in night time.
“Still, certain crucial points in the city do get cleaned in the night even now. Garbage collection in the night will resume in full swing after the weather changes and the nights get warmer,” lakra assured. There are no plans though, to provide warm clothes to waste collectors.
“Our door-to-door collection, which goes on till 2:00 pm, requires the garbage trucks for unloading the trash collected from households by our rickshaw trolleys. This is the reason for some of our trash trucks running in the city during daytime,” stated Medical Officer of Health AK Manjhi.
As for stopping traffic, the garbage trucks are not the culprits here, claim RMC officials.
“Our trash cars usually collect garbage by parking well out of the traffic’s way. Intent is to not create problems for commuters while disposing our duty,” stated Manjhi.
“RMC garbage truck drivers coordinate with us if they need to clean an area where flow of traffic might be affected. From what we have seen, they come to streets during rush hours only if there is a complaint of trash piled up in a place,” said Traffic Inspector Khurshid Akram Khan.