Nine councillors from the newly added wards of the Municipal Corporation of Dehradun said that the civic body is not taking adequate care of the newly added wards. They met the municipal commissioner Vinay Shankar Pandey on Friday and vented their concern over the interests of the newly added wards not being rightly taken care of.
They said that the apathy of the civic body officers to the plight of the people living in these wards is compounding the civic problems they have been grappling with. While meeting the officer, they particularly cited the improper sanitation and non-functioning street lights in their areas. “The problems the people of these wards are facing are so huge that we cannot believe that solutions would come out of the first board meeting. We, at least, hope that a positive initiative would be taken in the direction of solving the problems,” a councillor of one such wards said.
The councillor from (ward number 85) Mathorowalla Mam Chand said, “Many of the street lights in our area have remained non-functioning for long.
When we complained about the same to MCD, a few of them were repaired and the rest were left the same.” He further said that the sanitation system in these newly added wards has not improved a bit. “The drainage system is crumbling and the complaints made on this are falling on deaf years. The people are not happy,” he said.
Another councillor said that the fused street lights are being replaced by sodium bulbs from the old 60 wards where the process of replacing sodium bulbs with LED bulbs is underway.
Councillors from these wards further alleged that the system has been unable to run efficiently with the board meeting taking time. They said that once the model code conduct is enforced, all works would come to a standstill. “This means the problems these wards are facing would remain where they are for the next four/five months,” said another councillor of the wards.
Assuring the councillors of full cooperation, the municipal commissioner Pandey said that solution to all the problems the newly included wards are facing would be solved soon. “Sodium lights would not be used in any pole in these wards. We have sanctioned nearly Rs 3 crore for replacing such bulbs with LED bulbs. We have also a plan of appointing more junior engineers in the civic body to cater to the people’s needs. Things would be discussed threadbare during the board meeting which would be held soon,” he said.