SMC’s smart solution: What a waste! Plastic drums overflow with filth

Surat: The Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) working hard to make the Diamond City a smart city. But its efforts seems to have backfired.

First the civic body removed the 1,100-odd large

garbage

containers of the city roads and placed small bins for waste collection. However, in some areas, especially central zone, people continued to dump the garbage on roads or dividers.

And now the smart solution SMC found for this was to place plastic drums on dividers so that people get into the habit of putting waste in the bins. These drums has become an eyesore for commuters.

SMC has placed 30 drums in Rander area and recently it put another 25 such drums in Kadarsa Ni Naal, Machiwad and Habibsha maholla of Central zone. One can see them kept on the dividers and overflowing with garbage. The drums in the middle of the roads on dividers could cause mishap and can also create traffic hazards.

“We placed these drums near to people’s homes and asked them to use it instead of throwing waste on roads,” said Mahendra Patel, deputy health officer, SMC central zone.

“Awareness campaign sending garbage collection vans twice a day and even punishing people didn’t stop people from dumping garbage on roads. So we decided to go with people’s need and came up with these idea,” said another senior SMC health official.

Soon, after Diwali in November, SMC had removed large garbage containers from the city roads as part of the smart city initiatives. But in absence of bins people threw garbage on roads. However, after SMC put up vigilance squad the menace was curbed to some extent.