Expressbuzz. Dec 22, 2008
BHAWANIPATNA: Sanitation has taken a backseat in areas under Bhawanipatna municipality due to acute staff crunch. The existing staff strength is grossly inadequate to manage roads measuring 233 km and drains measuring 220 km in the town inhabited by one lakh people.
At present, the Municipality is having 55 regular and 19 DLR scavenger staff apart from 22 temporary staff against the requirement of 292 employees. To add to the woes, the temporary staff are set to be retrenched in January as per a government order.
While about 70 percent of the posts are lying vacant and fresh recruitment has been stalled due to a ban imposed by Urban Development Department.
Out of 20 wards in the municipality, sanitation work has been privatised in six wards for which an agreement has been inked with Sulabh International. For the purpose Rs 1.8 lakh is being paid to the agency per month. However, there is hardly any improvement in the state of affairs after outsourcing of sanitation works. Non-monitoring by the municipality authorities has made the matter even worse. As a result, heaps of garbage are lying on roadsides and drains chocked. Repeated reminders by residents have gone unheeded.
The state of affairs is equally poor in 14 other wards where the sanitation work is being managed directly by the municipality. Particularly the banks of water bodies like Purusottam Sagar, Nuabandh and Asha Sagar are littered with garbage. In the absence of a dumping yard, the garbage collected from the town are also dumped along the Bhawanipatna-Raipur road polluting the environs.
Instead of taking measures to improve the situation in the six wards where sanitation has been privatised, the municipality is now planning to outsource sanitation in five other wards with a monthly payment of Rs 1.2 lakh
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