Chairman initiates slew of steps to take care of citizens and city as well
Nagpur: In the first meeting of newly formed Health Committee of Nagpur Municipal Corporation, Chairman Virendra Kukreja stressed on making the Health Department a ‘Modernised’ and ‘Mechanised’ department taking care of all citizens and city as well.
Interacting with media persons, Kukreja said that due to deficient rain, the Health Department has been directed to gear itself up to tackle the problems it will create for citizens. Faced with the stray dog menace, Kukreja said that a Dog Van will be made available in each of 10 zones in the city to deal with the problem. He called for deploying fogging machines to prevent vector-borne diseases. If required, he added, fogging machines should be taken on rent.
Pointing out that there were total 239 drainage lines in the city of which 78 were cleaned regularly with machines and 161 were cleaned manually. “We have proposed to clean 100 of these 161 drainage lines, using machines,” he said. Also, toilets will be constructed in all markets of NMC. As far as shifting the cattle-sheds out of the residential areas of the city is concerned, Kukreja said that 460 such sheds would be shifted to a location in Gorewada.
“We have announced Nandgram project in the budget. Now, tender process for the same is in final stage. Once tender process is completed, the work of shifting cattlesheds will begin,” he said. Besides, briquettes will be made available at four more crematoriums in the city namely Mokshadham, Sahakar Nagar, Manewada, and Mankapur. At present, briquettes are available at Ambazari Ghat only.
Kukreja further said that in accordance with State Government’s directives, Nagpur Municipal Corporation will start collecting user charges of Rs 60 per month per household for garbage collection. “We have decided to ask the two new agencies to be appointed for garbage collection, to collect these user charges,”said the Chairman of Health Committee. He said that the tender for appointment of two new agencies was floated. The tender will be opened on August 3. As per the directives, in case of commercial properties the user charges will be Rs 90 per month. The charges will be higher for other categories. For instance,in case of marriage halls and shopping malls, the user charges will be as high as Rs 2,000 per month.
The hawkers/vendors also will have to shell out Rs 180 per month as user charges. There will be five per cent hike in user charges every year. The Government directives also call for recovering penalty of Rs 300 from those giving non-segregated garbage to the personnel of collection agencies. Besides, there will be a provision for fine of Rs 5,000 for burning of waste. Similar to user charges, the amount of fine also will increase as per the categories. For example, the amount of fine will be Rs 5,000 for the first instance in case of apartment/flat schemes, marriage halls, shopping complexes etc. It will increase in case of repeated violation, Kukreja said.
Garbage bins to be fitted with GPS devices:
The Chairman of Health Committee further said that under the Smart City Project, even the garbage bins would be fitted with GPS devices. At present, NMC has installed blue and green garbage bins at various identified locations across the city so that people dump wet and dry municipal waste there.
However, the idea of segregation of wet and dry waste has not really worked. For, people dump mixed municipal waste in these bins. At many places, the bins are damaged and have been removed too. When this was pointed out to Kukreja, he said that the new bins to be installed would have GPS devices. Once a particular weightage of garbage is there in a bin, people sitting at control room will get an alert and that particular bin can be emptied by collecting garbage, he added.
