The failure of the Pauri municipality to follow the directions of the National Green Tribunal and directive of the District administration to ensure proper waste disposal cost a truck driver his life.
Eight months after being directed to ensure scientific waste disposal, the municipality has continued dumping garbage near lower Chopra where the municipal garbage disposal truck fell off the road on January 17, causing the driver’s death. The District Magistrate had, in the past, ordered the municipality to stop garbage dumping at this site.
Taking cognisance on the environmental pollution and public inconvenience being caused by the improper dumping of garbage, District Magistrate Chandresh Kumar had last year instructed the municipal board to ensure scientific disposal of the garbage, but the board didn’t follow the instruction and started dumping garbage in the areas surrounding the town.
On the complaints of the residents of lower Chopra, the DM told the municipality to stop dumping garbage in this area following which the municipal board chairman Yashpal Benam had directed the sanitation employees to stop disposing garbage till the DM withdrew his order. This caused garbage to pile in various areas of Pauri in September last year.
The District Magistrate had then called a meeting in which Benam had assured that garbage would be disposed in the trenching ground otherwise he would provide land for this purpose in his native village of Siroli. However, this promise was not kept. RTI activist Ashok Thapliyal questioned why the garbage is being disposed in the night. He alleged that the negligence of the municipality is responsible for the recent death of the truck driver who died when the garbage truck fell of the road in the process of dumping garbage.