The Pioneer 06.09.2010
Ensure proper sanitation in town: DM
PNS | Dehradun
Considering the spread of malaria, dengue, swine flu and other diseases, the Dehradun District Magistrate Sachin Kurve has directed the Health Department and Municipal authorities to undertaken efforts to prevent the spread of such diseases.
The DM has directed the Municipal Corporation of Dehradun Health division officials to ensure that proper sanitation in maintained in the town and necessary fumigation is done in areas to control the spread of diseases form mosquitoes.
However, observers maintain that the MCD is not capable enough to ensure the desired level of sanitation due to anomalies in its resources and operational condition.
Lack of civic sanitation in Dehradun is one of the major factors responsible for the various sicknesses afflicting residents in town since the advent of the rainy season. Though the risk to public health posed by lack of civic sanitation has been a challenge for authorities in Dehradun ever since the formation of Uttarakhand, both the District administration and the MCD have failed to make any proper arrangement to maintain proper civic sanitation in town.
Dehradun generates more than 200 metric tons of solid municipal waste per day but the MCD is able to facilitate the effective disposal by scientific method of less than half of the total quantity of garbage. Even this limited disposal of garbage by the MCD has been affected ever since the municipal trenching grounds near Sahastradhara Road reached more than its full capacity for waste.
Though this trenching ground had reached its capacity at least a couple of years ago, the MCD continued dumping waste here without using scientific methods like burying waste in the soil. People in localities near this trenching ground protested against its continued use by the MCD and allowed the MCD to dump garbage there only after the authorities assured them that an alternative dumping site would be used within a few months.
The delay in completion of the construction of the solid waste management facility being constructed with Rs 24.6 crore under Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) is also exerting a substantial negative effect on the efforts of the authorities to maintain civic sanitation in town.
Though the DM has directed officials of the MCD and Health Department to ensure measures for maintaining civic sanitation, observers State that considering the resources and efficiency of the departments concerned it is impractical to expect them to deliver the goods.
