Festival season not suited for cleanliness drive: Experts

With Swachch Bharat (Clean India) campaign set to start from Thursday, Bangaloreans feel that the City has “dirty” areas which crave for immediate cleaning.

There are some prominent black spots in the City’s prime locations which need to be cleaned. One of the primary reasons for this is failure of ‘Kasamukta’ (free from garbage) campaign launched by Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike and State government.

Experts said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s campaign against garbage was prompted by Bangalore's garbage crisis. And this is the reason why he announced the campaign in the City during his visit, they added.

They also stated that some of the dirtiest areas, apart from landfill sites, were market areas in the City and areas surrounding open drains.

The areas which need immediate attention are: Church Street, Ejipura, K R Market, Johnson Market, Russell Market, Challaghatta Valley, parts of Old Airport Road, Murugeshpalya and Mysore Road.

They also pointed out that it was a bad day to start the campaign as it was festival season and heaps of garbage would be littered across the City. Urban Planner V Ravichandra said underpasses and subways too were worst affected in the City.

Church Street is always dirty because of garbage and sewage problems. Then come the areas near open drains in Domlur, Indiranagar and Challaghatta Valley.

Citizens’ responsibility

“Maintaining cleanliness is in the hands of citizens. Failure of Kasamukta campaign is another reason for poor cleanliness,” he said. 

Bangalore Political Action Committee (BPAC) member Harish Bijoor said that literally every part of Bangalore was a black spot. The main roads of every area are clean, while interiors continue to remain dirty like in the case of Shivajinagar, Commercial Street, MG Road, Ulsoor, Johnson Market and Chickpet. The only clean place in Bangalore is Vittal Mallya Road, because it is privately maintained. The Kasamukta campaign is successful only here.

“The prime reason for failure of the campaign is because the chain link was not maintained. Though people segregate garbage at source, workers pile it up in one vehicle and dump it in the dumping yards,” he added.

Urban planner Ashwin Mahesh pointed out that stormwater drains which were networked with sewage lines, were the dirtiest as they were the biggest source of silt. Another problem is poor garbage management. He added that the Kasamukta campaign was started in 22 wards on a pilot basis. However, it never covered all of them. The concept of door-to-door collection of waste too has failed as it was not implemented strictly.

Mayor N Shanthakumari admitted that the entire City was dirty. “I have not seen all areas of the City, but so far from whatever I have seen, I can say that every ward is dirty, including Mahadevapura, Bommanahalli and Govindarajanagar,” she said.
DH News Service