The Hindu 06.11.2013
Call for ‘war against garbage’
Collector asks commissioners tovisit all wards twice a week
Collector Siddharth Jain on Tuesday called upon the
municipal commissioners in West Godavari district to get ready for a
‘war against garbage’ in all the seven municipal towns and the Eluru
Municipal Corporation (EMC). Speaking at a meeting with the municipal
commissioners here, he said a campaign named war against garbage would
be launched shortly with public participation to upkeep sanitary
conditions in the civic towns. The pell-mell conditions mainly caused by
dumping of garbage in public places were posing a serious threat to
public health in most of the civic towns in the district, he said.
Mr.
Jain instructed the municipal commissioners to go round the
wards/divisions in their respective municipal areas at least twice in a
week. The visits would help them have a direct rapport with the people
and fee back on prevailing civic conditions, besides personal
supervision over the functioning of sanitary workers, he said. The
Collector wanted the personnel of the civic bodies to live up to the
expectations of people in providing basic amenities such as drinking
water, street lighting and roads.
Mr. Jain said
availability of compost yards in all the towns was a mandatory. He
promised to look into the proposals submitted by the authorities of the
municipalities which did not have the compost yard facility yet. The
municipal commissioners were expected to ensure that the garbage
collected from the households reached the compost yard, he added.
The
Collector said any lenient view on collection of property tax in the
civic bodies would not be tolerated. He emphasised the need to plug the
loopholes in assessment of property rates and shore up municipal
revenues. He asked the municipal commissioners to submit to him the
action taken reports on the measures initiated against evasion of
property taxes on daily basis. Ravindrababu, Regional Joint Director,
Department of Urban Development and Municipal Administration, and Sesha
Reddy, Project Director, Mission for Elimination of Poverty in Municipal
Areas (MEPMA) spoke.