Tezpur public flays municipality over poor garbage collection moves

From a Correspondent

Tezpur, Jan 30: Tezpur, which is regarded as the city of joy and tural beauty, also known as the cultural capital of Assam, has nowadays become a city of garbage due to the frequent strike by the cleaners  under the municipality board and the chaos and hectic lobbying among the municipality board members. The Tezpur Municipal Board constituted in 1894 under the provision of the Municipal Act covers an area of 7.10 sq km. having a council of 19 elected ward commissioners. As per the official record, the Grade II status Tezpur municipality board with a demographical representation of municipal area records 58,559 according to the 2011 census. The slum population inside the municipal area is 6,672. The total number of households in the municipal area is 13,749. However, the denizens lament that the Tezpur Municipal Board, which is committed to provide different facilities to the public like water, street lights, roads, draige and sanitation, has totally failed to fulfil its responsibility.

 Beside this, the Tezpur Municipal Board has one public burial ground, seven markets, 33 community halls and five ancient ponds which are in a very unhygienic state due to the lack of maintence by the authority. Again, rapid growth of urban population and urbanization has led to the ever increasing demand of urban service. But according to the requirement, the Tezpur municipal body has not been able to deal with these issues.

 Meanwhile, the stir of the cleaners (sweepers) entered its third day on Tuesday. The cleaners are protesting in support of various demands like hike in salary. Due to the stir, waste materials, including solid waste, have been lying scattered everywhere in the town and this is posing a health hazard for the people, not to speak of the unpleasant odour from the garbage.

 People have alleged that the municipal board authority neither addresses the issue of the safai workers (sweepers) nor takes any initiative to keep the town clean by engaging other workers. Ranjit Barua, a socially aware citizen, here said that the permanent employees under the board also had problems with their duty as there was a conflict regarding engagement of private employees for cleaning the town. “The slogans like ‘Clean Tezpur, Green Tezpur’ and Modi’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan do not carry any meaning here,” he rued.