Open spaces turn into dump yards

BHUBANESWAR: Call it people’s irresponsible behaviour or civic apathy, neighbourhood vacant plots and fields in the city have turned into informal waste dump yards. As the neighbourhood spaces gather household garbage, the capital city becomes a picture of squalor. They not only lend an ugly sight to the city peripheries, but also turn into mosquito-breeding grounds.
Conscious citizens feel that both people and civic body are responsible for such practice to continue. Despite crores of rupees being spent on beautifying the city, heaps of garbage in spaces along the city’s core areas and its peripheries continue to give the authorities a headache.
“In some cases, the urban body remains oblivious to hundreds of such mini dump yards. Very often people from high-rises throw waste on the vacant spaces just because they find it convenient. But it makes the environment around them dirty ultimately leading to stink and health hazards. Places beside culverts and bridges, a slice of open space behind an apartment, space between two offices, conservancy lanes, boundaries close to schools and colleges, unused government lands that are used for dumping are full of filth,” said educationist Biswaranjan Mohapatra, a resident of Bhubaneswar.
Residents feel the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC), which has been fighting sanitation issues for a long time, has to plan afresh to stop the practice of waste dump in vacant spaces.
“We are in the know that informal waste dumps have come up at several places. Our provision to penalise people in circumstances is well laid down. We will strictly implement it as we fear in absence of punitive measures, it will recur. Also, to start with, we will use BMC resources to clean them all first,” said BMC commissioner Vijay Kulange.