A clean and beautiful city is a dream of every resident. Although the State Government and civic body claim spending large sum of amount on putting in place an organised waste disposal system but its result is not visible accordingly. City continues to fight with the menace of garbage and major reason considered is shortage of workers.
Around 750 metric tonnes of biodegradable waste comes out everyday from all the 55 wards of the city. And to efficiently manage the waste disposal work the Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC) requires around 9,000 workers. But the civic body of the Capital city has about 5,000 workers to collect waste from the urban households.
“Strengthening the worker’s number is the direst need of the hour but the successive governments had not given priority to this. The issue had been brought into the notice of officials of Urban Development Department. We are keeping our fingers crossed for an early solution,” said RMC Deputy CEO Om Prakash.
It has been more than six months for the A2Z waste management company to bid goodbye from the responsibility and after huge fuss RMC decided to carry out the waste management system with the contractual staffs. Nearly, 1,800 contractual labourers have been employed in 18 circles of the city for sweeping the roads but large section of the workers is not found doing their work with utmost loyalty.
Notably, each ward requires 25-30 workers but the current average strength is just 10. However, the reason for mess in each ward is attributed to the presence of only four to five staffs at a point of time. Despite the fact that there is a supervisor for every ward civic body is not able to address the problem.
“Complaints from residents regarding irregularities in garbage collection from their locality have become a common phenomenon for us. Despite having supervisors we are not able to unearth the reason behind workers’ absence. The matter has been put forth in the standing committee meeting too and the Mayor had assured to look into the matter seriously and take concrete action accordingly,” said Councilor of Ward number 30 Om Prakash.
Incidentally, the corporation has around 415 dumping sites in the city where local workers after collecting waste from different localities dump there. This waste is later collected by corporation’s vehicle and carried to treatment plant at Jhiri. Ironically, the corporation has only 50 vehicles including trucks and loaders for the transportation of the waste. Moreover, the vehicles do not reach the dumping site regularly as a result of which garbage keeps piling. There is no system to monitor the movement of vehicles.
“I have been informed about the problems. All the grievances will be addressed soon,” added Mayor Asha lakra.
Meanwhile, when Urban Development Department Joint Secretary Nirmal Bhuiya was enquired over the matter, he said, “We are aware about the issues. The department is making efforts in this direction.”