Bengaluru: While the Swach Bharath campaign goes great guns in city railway stations and bus stands, garbage still remains uncollected in most of the residential areas. An example is Koramangala block. Garbage is piled up right in front of houses and parks in this locality.
Koramangala is considered one of the posh areas of Bengaluru today. A closer look reveals a different, filthier picture. Biswajit Majumdar, a resident of Koramangala 5th block says, “We have put up a board saying, ‘Don’t throw garbage here’ but people continue to dump their garbage right in front of our building. There are times when the civic workers do not come for days to collect it or clean it up and it looks like a big dumping yard. This attracts a lot of rats, dogs and cows. In fact, now we even have rats coming into our houses.”
Echoing these views is Radhika Ranganathan, another resident, who adds, “These piles of garbage are a health hazard for us and our children. Every now and then people in Bengaluru are falling sick. There are reports of dengue fever everywhere. We want the authorities to do something about cleaning up the residential areas quickly.”
With every passing day, there are new apartments and houses coming up here. In fact, a court order has been issued that all future projects like big apartments have to manage their own waste and have their own processing centres.
Says Raghavindra Kumar, a resident, “Before giving permission to anyone to build apartments or houses, BBMP should see how it is going to manage this additional garbage.” Niveditha K feels, “There is serious lack of public awareness about these matters even now. The civic authorities should plan workshops to create awareness on a massive scale if the Swach Bharath Abhiyaan campaign has to be successful.”
‘Keeping city clean is a 365-day job’
DC in conversation with Ramalinga Reddy, district in-charge minister
What is your take on clean India campaign?
No doubt, it is a national campaign but sadly it happened only for one day. Keeping the city and its areas clean is a 365-day job. I am aware that the garbage is piled up in the city post the festive season. We are also unable to clear the garbage because truck drivers on leave.
Why were residential areas are ignored?
When some thing like campaigns happens they are more of symbolic and they are organised mostly in public places like bus stands. What we need to do is on reducing the increase number of garbage, especially the plastic. Over the last few years, the accumulation of garbage has increased multifold and we must address this.
What are governments next step in answering the garbage issue?
Firstly, we need to process the garbage which is accumulated in large quantities. So far we only had garbage dumps and now we will be supporting them with processing units in the coming future.
