Shillong: The Swachh Bharat campaign was launched by the State Government recently but other than the one day affair Meghalaya has no short, medium and long term plan on taking this campaign forward.
While the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi has taken up the broom on several occasions including cleaning up his adopted Varanasi, Meghalaya’s Chief Minister Mukul Sangma is yet to see the face of a broom.
Shillong has grown exponentially but the suburbs are left to stink in garbage because Greater Shillong is out of the purview of the Urban Affairs Department and therefore there are no civic amenities for people living outside the 10 sq km radius of Shillong city.
The entire stretch of road below the BSF camp in Umpling leading on to NEIGRHIMS has become a public dumping ground. The road is a public space and although it falls under Umpling Dorbar, the Dorbar does not have the bandwidth to police the area and catch the polluters.
Not that the Rangbah Shnong of Umpling and his team have not tried. They have apprehended people who some from elsewhere and dump garbage in the forest alongside the road but they cannot be policing the road everyday 24×7, they said.
Concerned citizens feel that the Government could appoint a few environmental police drawn from different localities along the line of the Village Defence Party (VDP). However, what most residents of Shillong feel is that if the garbage collection system is regulated there would be no need for someone from Madanrting to dump garbage at Laitumkhrah or Nongthymmai or Umpling.
The other day this reporter saw people dumping garbage at the Mawri Memorial Triangle at the Fire Brigade tri-junction opposite Kiddies Corner Hostel. The place was once maintained by Rotary Club of Shillong but has now gone to seed and turned into an ugly spot in the middle of the city’s premiere location. Neither the Lummawrie Dorbar nor the Rotary Club is looking after this place.
A member of the Rotary Club said that earlier the Club was maintaining the park but later the Dorbar Shnong took it over from them.
Shillong’s problem is also in disposing off hundreds of white thermocol boxes used to cart fish from Andhra Pradesh and elsewhere to Meghalaya. These boxes are seen dumped along the Shillong-Guwahati road.
Despite this imminent threat of being swamped by garbage and rivers and drains being clogged by plastic bags Government is yet to take a call on complete ban on plastic bags and in the absence of that ban to find a way of recycling the plastic waste.
Ironically even the place next to the present Meghalaya Assembly (Rilbong Road) has become a regular garbage dump. The Shillong Municipality seems to have lost the plot.
