Poor waste management leaves Ramanagara dirty

By Arsha BS

Walking through the roads of residential areas in Ramanagara is easy until bad smell from drainage pipes assails one’s nose. The odour intensifies as one gets to the main road. Cows walking through piles of garbage is an everyday sight for residents of the town.

A stark difference can be noticed between solid waste management in residential areas and other public spaces. Half-hearted garbage clearance has made the lives of residents miserable. Municipal authorities ignore clearing up waste in public places, focusing on residential areas alone.

Krishna Naik, a resident of the town for 15 years, informed The Observer that nobody bothers to clean roads in the town. “The condition is terrible. Every kind of waste is mixed up. It is too bad. The authorities do not seem to care to do anything.”

Somshekhar M, another resident, said: “Have you seen the roads in Thirumalai? They are filled with waste. I don’t know what we can do as residents to rectify the situation. The authorities have to work for it, I guess.”

The Observer noticed solid waste management being done efficiently by the authorities in residential and market areas.

Kusuma C.V., a senior health inspector of Ramanagara’s municipal body, said she goes for an inspection every morning. “Our jurisdiction is between Thirumalai temple and Someshwar Colony. If you go and look at these places, you will be able to see the efficiency of our work. Our staff have been working tirelessly to make sure waste is segregated and cleared. R.R. Road, which is a market road, with a population of 2,000 people, is quite clean.”

Asked how the Directorate of Women and Child Department is helping private SHGs, Savitha YD, Senior Assistant Director, said it has a scheme called Streeshakthi whose benefits can only be availed by the government SHGs. She refused to share any further information with The Observer.

According to information put up on the website of Directorate of Women And Child Development, Streeshakthi Groups were formed to inculcate the savings habit in the members empowering the women economically. About 20 members who are from below poverty line families, landless agricultural laborers and SC/ST women join hands.

“My mother-in-law says if she gets a loan from the government, she would open a vegetable shop. My husband, who pays rent for the car he drives, can buy a car and do business. We have no other options but to rely on SHGs and local moneylenders who lend at a very high interest rate. The best part about corporation/government loans is that they provide subsidies. Construction workers use their labour cards to avail of certain benefits from the government but what about street vendors and drivers,” Valli said.

As per data shared by the Ambedkar corporation, the financial achievement of the corporation under the Microcredit Scheme was Rs 37.94 crore in financial year 2020-21, which dropped to Rs 5.25 crore in the financial year 2021-2022. yukta.m@iijnm.org

Citizen’s Voice

Sixty-three persons excluding pourakarmikas work to keep Ramanagara clean. Awareness programmes under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan are conducted regularly to make sure the residents know how to segregate dry and wet waste.

Kusuma said: “We have a WhatsApp group where we update and post pictures of the cleaning that happens every day. The staff also go to houses to make people aware of the process that they have to follow and also conduct meetings with pourakarmikas on the first week of every month to understand problems regarding the matter, if any. There’ve been a lot of reforms in the way we manage the waste as well. To clean wet waste, we have machinery support. We also came up with cleaning in the night, but it couldn’t be worked out because a lot of pourakarmikas were absent,” Kusuma said.

The Observer noticed that the temple area is not as clean as claimed by the authorities.

Drains in residential areas, filled with waste, stinks.

Full report on the website: www.theweeklyobserver.in

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