JOIN USWith a section of the sanitation staff of the three municipal corporations going on strike, the banks of the Yamuna river have become a dumping yard after the idol immersion on the occasion of Durga Puja.
At least 27 safai karamchari unions of the civic agencies went on strike on Friday over several issues, including non-payment of salaries.
With garbage piling up in several areas of the city, Yamuna too had to suffer.
On Sunday, two days after the immersion, there was stink emanating from the puja leftovers accumulated at its banks at Qudsia ghat.
While taking the puja material out of the river is the responsibility of the Irrigation and Flood department and Civil Defence team, cleaning the ghats is the job of the municipal corporations.
“Our responsibility was just to clean the river of the puja material. The garbage has to be taken by MCD trucks,” said Dev Singh, who works in the Civil Defence and was deployed at the Qudsia Ghat near ISBT.
The situation was the same at six other ghats where idol immersion took place.
Besides the issue of garbage being dumped, other directions issued by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) were also not followed during immersion.
“The arrangement made by the state authorities were certainly better than previous years but despite that lot of unauthorised immersion took place. Many people went beyond the fences and immersed the idols at areas which were not permitted,” said environmentalist Manoj Misra, convener of Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan, an organization that has been working to clean and revitalize Yamuna for nearly a decade and whose petition the NGT had passed slew of measures under the ‘Maili se Nirmal Yamuna Revitalisation plan 2017’.
The NGT had also directed to fine people immersing idols made from non-biodegradable material or plastic in the river.
“There were many who didn’t follow the directions but no fine was issued to anyone. Despite better efforts this time, results could not be seen,” he said.