Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC) has decided to ignore the protesting voices of local residents which forced it to postpone inauguration of Mini Transfer Station (MTS) of daily waste on Thursday at Khelgaon. Even though Civic body administrators didn’t appear unanimous in themselves with the thought of suppressing local voices, Municipal Commissioner Prashant Kumar has written to DC Manoj Kumar to provide adequate security there, so that the station could be inaugurated in a day or two.
“It is just ‘not in my backyard’ syndrome. Even those who are opposing the station believe and praise the currently working model of Mini Transfer Station (MTS) at Morhabadi, which we are trying to replicate at rest 16 proposed MTSs in the city including Khelgaon. The only issue is that they don’t want it around them, even without listening to us,” said Municipal Commissioner Prashant Kumar.
Though Kumar admitted that getting local residents opposing the MTS of daily waste at its present location in Khelgaon was unfortunate, he said that taking help of administration to turn it functional was the only option left with the civic body in ongoing situation.
“Forceful inauguration is not a solution. This is not the route we would like to take at the time of opening of rest of the stations. However, as far as this time and Khelgaon location is concerned, locals have left no other option for us to work on, because the station is ready to be operational,” said Kumar.
However local residents accused the RMC of deceiving them. “They not even intimated us or kept us informed about what kind of construction was going on there. We were kept in dark. If we knew that a waste dumping mini station was under construction right in front of our flats, we could have not even allowed the physical construction at the first place,” said Arvind Sahay, a resident of the area.
In a quest to make city clean and tidy, the RMC had decided to change the model of existing waste management. Under this, it decided to construct 17 MTS of daily waste in the city, which were to be used as secondary waste collect station, from where waste was to be sent to dumping yard at Jhiri. In this model, the existing combined micro transfer stations of 3-4 wards were to be removed. One such model is in functional from some time in Morhabadi, while rest 16 including one in Khelgaon are to become operational in phased manner.
“The model we are adopting now is very good model, in which waste would not appear in open, and they wouldn’t pollute air and water either. The MTS in Khelgaon is also three layered station, where there is no chance of odor, air pollution or waste to be visible from outside. However, I believe there must have been a lack of communication between us and the locals,” said Deputy Mayor Sanjeev Vijayvargiya.
locals though admitted that the problem was mainly because of lack of communication. “We are responsible citizen who want our colony clean and tidy. We are not against any waste station around us, if it is next to impossible to displace it some half a kilometer away. However, the adamancy that Municipal Commissioner demonstrated on Wednesday by threatening us to deploy a Magistrate to get the station operational was something unwanted, unacceptable and, I personally feel, immature also. He must have kept a window of constructive dialogue open, which we would still appreciate, so that our grievances could be addressed,” said Sahay.