Despite being claimed to have adequate staff and resources, the Municipal Corporation of Dehradun appears to be lagging far behind when it comes to maintaining the desired level of civic sanitation in the provisional State Capital Dehradun.
The rural area of the State was recently declared Open Defecation Free (ODF) but Dehradun continues to suffer from lack of civic sanitation with the Corporation also failing to penalise those indulging in littering.
Though the Municipal officials stated that garbage was collected daily from homes, heaps of garbage dumped in the open have still remained a common sight in the city. Even as the city experiences spells of rain in the runup to the advent of monsoon, the improperly dumped garbage exacerbates the problem as it ends up in the drains leading to water logging and a public health issue.
Talking to The Pioneer, senior municipal health officer, Dr Kailash Gunjyal, said, “There is no dearth of staff in the corporation. We have 754 permanent sanitation workers with 120 nullah gang members. Moreover, there are 18-20 workers in the workshop too.” Dr Gunjyal further added that there were 60 door-to-door waste collection vehicles and 12-trucks for waste disposal in the city. When asked about the unattended waste in several areas of the city, the health officer said that he would look into the matter.