Despite being badly slashed down in the sanitation challenge-2017 ranking, Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC) is yet to pull up its socks to ensure cleanliness within the urban vicinity.
Officials and elected representatives are beating around the bush with no concrete version to cite in spite of seeing the present condition of sanitation in the Capital city where the concerned solid waste management company, Essel Infra is delivering poor service with piles of waste scattered along the roads and streets.
Urban Development Minister, CP Singh said that he has asked the official of State Urban Development Agency (SUDA) to prepare a concrete report about the cause of the delay in ensuring cleanliness. He also said that he is monitoring the present status of cleanliness since the day the results have been declared.
“Undoubtedly, the company that has been given the charge of solid waste management has failed to deliver its duty. I have asked the officials of Municipal Corporation to submit a report about the present status of work taken up by the concerned company so far,” said Singh.
When asked, whether the concerned company will be sued for not carrying out the work in the a stipulated timeframe, Singh further said that it will be too early to say anything regarding this as the company is already working in 22 wards and it will be difficult to engage another agency for the same purpose.
Deputy Mayor Sanjiv Vijaywargiya maintained that the civic body is brainstorming on the condition of improving the level of sanitation while reconsidering on the fact that it may also give the charge of solid waste disposal to some other agency sooner or later. Notably, Essel Infra has charged `2.50 crore so far for facilitating door to door service of collecting waste and segregating waste products.
“The idea has been proposed to the board members and senior officials of the RMC to make some proper alternative arrangement to cover all wards and to speed up the garbage collection system besides, carrying out other sanitation work. At present, we have just paid `50 lakh to the company. The company has been given the ultimatum to take up the work at the earliest,” said the Deputy Mayor.
The Deputy Mayor assured that if within six months the work of Essel Infra is not improved then the civic body will hire some other agency for sanitation work. Similarly, RMC will soon give the charge of modular toilet maintenance to Ejaz Agency and will also increase the number of dustbins along the busiest streets, he added.
Essel Infra was supposed to construct 14 mini transfer stations for serving the need of five wards each in municipal periphery but even after a year, the company has just constructed four transfer stations for segregating waste materials. Transfer stations located at Harmu, Morabadi, Kantatoli and Khelgaon are handling the charge of all 22 wards. MSW Essel Infra General Manager Arun Kumar Singh was unavailable for comments.