Mounds of garbage lying on several streets raise a stink in Lucknow

LUCKNOW: The ongoing tussle between the Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC) and Eco-Green Limited, the private company hired by the corporation for solid waste management (SWM), has resulted in mounds of garbage piling up on roads across the city. Residents are forced to battle unhygienic conditions as the waste is not being collected and disposed of on a regular basis.
While the LMC said it has already recommended cancellation of the Eco-Green Limited's contract because of its unsatisfactory work, officials of the private company said the work was affected because the civic body had not paid dues for a long time.
The LMC had announced a month ago that after cancellation of Eco-Green's contract, it will be replaced with a Finnish company, Cleantech, but nothing concrete has happened so far. The city generates around 2,000 metric tonnes of the waste daily. The garbage collected from door-to-door, open dumping sites and compactors (garbage transfer stations) is transported to the waste treatment plant in Shivri.
According to the Eco-Green officials, it has 2,500 employees for garbage collection and disposal, but nearly 50% are not working because the company could not pay their wages on time due to non-payment of Rs 50 crore by the LMC pending from May 2022 till date.
TOI's reality check also found garbage dumps across the city, including Jiamau, Narhi, Vinay Khand, Chinhat, LDA colony, Thakurganj, Aliganj, Jopling road, Campbell road, Ashok marg, Shahnajaf road, Jankipuram, Aashiana, Rajajipuram, Hussainabad, Bhoothnath, Mahanagar and Indiranagar. "The garbage dump near my house has not been cleared for the past two weeks. The stench has now become unbearable," said Udai Singh of Jiamau.
Abhijeet Kumar of Gomtinagar said: "Even at a posh area like ours, no garbage vehicle has come to collect waste for three weeks."
Rajajipuram resident Aman Singh said: "The sanitation workers come rarely, resulting in huge garbage piles everywhere, posing threat of outbreak of infectious diseases."
When contacted, municipal commissioner Inderjit Singh said: "For immediate relief to the people, we will deploy our own vehicles and workers to clean the city."
He, however, refused to comment on Eco-green's contract saying that the LMC had recommended the urban development department to cancel its license in January itself. He also said representatives of the Finnish Company will soon visit the city to give a presentation for effective SWM in the city.