Instead of focusing on areas that requires much attention from sanitation perspective, State’s biggest Urban local Body (UlB) — Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC) — seems to be trying to hide the ground reality of Capital City’s slums.
In the name of effective utilisation of Information, Education and Communication (IEC) techniques for creating awareness among people residing at slums and those areas that lacks basic sanitation practice, the civic body has put up huge banners beside slums to keep them hiding from the common citizens.
The decision taken just a few days ahead of the Swachcchta Sarvekshan-2018 of covering slum areas with banners with cleanliness messages inscribed on it has raised the eyebrows of many. Also, since the beginning of the survey, more concentration was on cleaning roads and sites that has the greater prospects of getting covered up during the Swachcchta Sarvekshan by the Central team.
Notably, the Karvy team is in State Capital to inspect the status of cleanliness for the ongoing programme — Swachcchta Sarvekshan-2018. Assessing the condition of slums, areas in and around the slum belts are major parameters for gaining descent ranking in the survey. Banners and posters installed in and around the slum pockets, at first instance only suggest that these temporary banner arrangements have been done to resolve a particular purpose.
Besides, from the checklists of the Karvy team that by far has just visited commercial areas, market places like Upper Bazar and Daily market, a few residential pockets, Jharkhand State Cricket Association (JSCA) Stadium to get familiar with the know-how of bulk generator system, major hotels/ restaurants while carrying on the spot verification of night sweeping method at Ranchi Railway Station checking the status of door to door garbage collection, none of the team members have yet taken an initiative to examine the condition of slum areas.
In addition, the inspection being carried out from last four-five days, the team had visited wards 8, 9, 10 and 11 for checking the condition of community toilets and public toilets, Individual Household latrine (IHHl) including other sanitation activities. No reports thus far of the team visiting the slums have been confirmed or reported by the civic body personnel.
Meanwhile, the officials from the Municipal Corporation have completely denied the fact terming it baseless. “Big banners standing tall at major routes like Birsa Chowk, Harmu, Shahjanand Chowk including others wards have been decked up to educate the public residing in the slums under the Swacchta Sarvekshan standards that includes what steps respective UlB has taken to spread awareness about Swachcchta Sarvekshan in the slum belts using IEC components,” said an RMC City Manager.
Elaborating furthermore on this, an official from the Municipal Corporation said that the team is well aware of all the slum areas of the city as these areas have been already demarcated in the map. “The arrangement is temporary and is not done for any special purpose. The team will be soon visiting slum areas as well,” stated an executive officer on anonymity.