Residents of the eastern suburbs made their discontent known over the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s failure to resolve the garbage problem by showing black flags to the civic standing committee members who visited the city’s dumping grounds on Thursday. Corporators from the area have also expressed apprehensions about the civic body’s attempts to deal with this issue.
On the backdrop of complaints of residents in the eastern suburbs facing health hazards due to pollution from dumping grounds, standing committee members along with civic chief Ajoy Mehta visited Mulund, Kanjurmarg and Deonar dumping grounds. However, they had to face people’s wrath as they were shown black flags by locals at Bhandup.
Local Shiv Sena corporator Ramesh Korgaonkar said, “The contractor at these dumping grounds are not carrying out work as per rules, due to which local residents are facing problems like foul smell and air pollution. The leachate (liquid) from Kanjur dumpsite has been spreading stench in the surrounding areas for several months. But the work for filtration plant and leachate treatment has started just recently, which shows the alacrity of the BMC to deal with this issue.”
Congress corporator from Ghatkopar Pravin Chheda demanded that the officials and staff at Deonar dumping ground be replaced at the earliest to weed out corruption there. “It is due to their apathetic approach that the garbage problem has escalated further and people are suffering,” he said. Mr Mehta has asked the solid waste management department to prepare a short-term plan to tackle the complaints.
