SHUBHANGI SHIFA
Ranchi, June 8: The garbage problems faced by the residents of the city seem to be increasing day by day despite Ranchi Municipal Corporation terminating the cleaning agency CDC almost a month ago. Keeping this in mind, the RMC is planning to take out yet another tender for the door-to-door collection of garbage.
Deputy Mayor Sanjeev Vijayvargiya, in this regard, said, “We are planning to take out a tender for door-to-door garbage collection within the next couple of weeks.”
When asked, if a tender would be taken out for recycling as well, the Dy mayor said, “No, it will only be for door-to-door, as the recycling part is being taken care of by Air India.”
Notably, after firing the agency, the RMC had taken the responsibility of maintaining cleanliness in the city and door to door collection on its own. However, despite several efforts of the RMC, the task seems impossible.
As a result, the cleanliness system of the city has derailed. Garbage is not being lifted from people’s homes and localities for several days. It is also not being lifted regularly from roadsides, due to which the risk of infection and disease has increased during the hot summer days.
As per sources, most areas of Ranchi see garbage collectors once a week. At the same time, roads in VIP areas are normally kept clean for a false assurance of garbage problems having been solved. Regular cleaning is being done in the localities where government officials and officials associated with the corporation reside.
Officials have claimed that there are around 2.25 lakh households in the 53 wards of Ranchi. These households generate around 500 tonnes of garbage daily, which is dumped at Jhiri, 15 km from Ranchi.
Meanwhile, in the financial year 2021-22, the Municipal Corporation collected a total of Rs 59 crore from the residents of Ranchi as tax on various items. This amount is Rs 8 crore more than the previous financial year. Despite this, the Municipal Corporation is proving unsuccessful in providing water, sanitation facilities and other basic facilities to the people of the capital in a normal manner.
Along with this, the municipal corporation has 300 garbage collection vehicles, while the total number of sweepers is about 2,100. Of these, 250-300 sweepers have been kept in various government departments and offices. In such a situation, only the remaining 1700-1800 scavengers do the work of cleaning the city.
The officials of the corporation would earlier blame the agencies including A to Z, CDC or Essel Infra for the mismanagement of garbage in the city. However, the municipal corporation has been handling the cleaning system on its own for the past one month but seems to have failed yet again.