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.
