Piles of trash turn nests for mosquitoes in city

LUCKNOW: Vikasnagar resident Shivangi Kashyap was forced to shift houses from one lane to another in the same locality just because no sweeper from the municipal corporation collected garbage from her previous house. Now, she has hired a private sweeper to collect garbage from her new house dailysomething that municipal sweepers would not have allowed at her older address.
One reason that led to her decision was the growing swarms of mosquitoes in her kitchen due to the mounting garbage piles. Her son had been suffering from painful mosquito bites.


An angry Kashyap said, “LMC had promised regular garbage collection from our houses, that is why I dismissed a private sweeper from his job and hired LMC’s collector instead. But, he rarely turned up. Garbage was giving fertile ground to mosquitoes and leading to an unhealthy atmosphere.”

There are hundreds of families in the city who have to daily deal with stinking garbage in homes because of non-punctuality of LMC’s garbage collectors. This leads to garbage piles on the roads as residents are forced to throw it there. The waste is a

fertile ground for mosquitoes. LMC’s private partner Eco-Green, which began garbage collection almost a year ago, has been able to cover less than half of the wards till now. Even in those, work is not regular.

Ramsagar Yadav of Kalyanpur said, “Garbage collection is not regular at all. As roads become dumping grounds, mosquitoes are mushrooming in uncontrolled manner. Littering and stagnated sludge in drains catalyse their birth. Lack of fogging only adds to their numbers.”

Even in colonies from where garbage is being picked, it is not daily transported to the designated place but dumped on roadsides.

Since LMC vehicles are not punctually removing garbage from roads, the waste is giving fodder to mosquitoes.

Tariq Khan of Vikasnagar said, “There is a huge garbage dumping ground just in front of my shop which rarely gets cleaned. As a result, there are a lot of mosquitoes in the area. It is difficult to even sit in the shop for a few minutes.”