Shillong: The waste disposal system of our city has turned out to become a nuisance after the recent implementation of an order stating that the locality garbage bins should be dismantled.
This step was taken to ensure that garbage was methodically collected and disposed. Garbage trucks and small segregation bins were introduced soon after this in and around the city. Since the implementation of this order, throwing garbage anywhere and everywhere has become a common affair in the city.
This happens to be a result of the municipality’s disability to carry out their duties efficiently. Irregularity and unpunctuality on the municipality’s part has become one of the biggest problems that the people of Shillong are having to pay a price for today.
Earlier, people would throw their garbage in the locality’s garbage bins from which the garbage trucks would come and collect the garbage every morning.
Now, trucks come every morning, having no specific timing, and honk for people to come throw their garbage. This is the scene in most of the localities in Shillong. It leads to a number of problems. Firstly, the trucks do not come at the same time every day.
Secondly, since the trucks halt at one particular place and honk, people are not always aware of the arrival of the truck. Also, senior citizens and specially abled people are unable to walk up to the trucks to dump their household wastes.
As a result of this, people either throw their household garbage into the small bins installed on the streets of the city, or dump the garbage in manually created pits in the dead of the night. What people also do is they manage to get someone to collect the garbage from their houses and dispose it off for which, they pay some amount of money to the particular garbage collectors.
Since people are as it is paying private garbage collectors to collect their household garbage, can this measure not be taken up by the municipality itself? Municipality trucks can continue to come every morning, but with it, can bring a few people, who will go till the doorstep of every house and collect garbage. Not only will this make garbage disposal a convenient affair for the residents of respective localities, but also generate employment for a large number of unemployed people.
By Hrith Roy
Choudhury, a student of St. Anthony’s College, Mass Media Dept
