Zone 4 residents show the way, tell PMC to adopt chronic garbage spots

The residents of zone 4, frustrated with the working of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), have given a clarion call to the authorities to get their act together and adopt a chronic garbage spot in the area.

For the past year, a group of volunteers working under the banner, Pune Waste Warriors’ has been constantly complaining to the authorities about the garbage lying around in some of the main chowks of the area. To show how much garbage has been lying around despite assurances that it will be collected and cleared, three members of the group, Czarina Bhojwani, Judith Menezes and Nergis Jamshedji, have even mapped all the chronic garbage spots in the zone.

“It is out of the sheer frustration of seeing the garbage surrounding us at such a large scale that we want the PMC to adopt these chronic spots and focus on clearing them with the help of our volunteers’ group. We have even mapped all 70 spots,” said Menezes.

The Pune Waste Warriors have conducted around 40 cleanliness drives at major chowks in the area such as Salunkhe Vihar road, Samvidhan chowk, Konarkpuram, Kausarbaug etc. and compelled ward officials to visit these areas to see the pathetic conditions that exist. Although the officials cite inadequate manpower as one of the reasons, it hasn’t deterred these warriors from bringing about change in some of the chronic spots just to make the officials realise that transformation is not impossible.

One of the volunteer members, col Deepak Kumar, stepped in with the idea to paint the walls which are often garbage hotspots and began the transformation to stop the people in the vasti from dumping garbage on the road. He did so with the help of crowd funding and bringing in bull dozers to clear inches of buried garbage.

“The Palace Orchard spot was very filthy and we raised funds through our own contributions initially after which we contacted nearby societies to get the labour to help paint and bulldozers to clean up. Volunteers like Puneeta Ranjan spoke to the people of the vasti to help create an amicable situation,” said col Kumar.

“Now we are looking at other spots to transform. But the issue remains why is the PMC not able to carry out a 100% pickup. They have turned themselves ‘bin free’ but not garbage free,” said Jamshedji.

According to the residents, PMC is turning a blind eye and working only if complaints are registered. “It is under the purview of the PMC to take away all the garbage and not delay the pickup. There are instances where the garbage collection service is a failure for we have seen even the Mukadams and sweepers burning garbage at certain spots, which is very sad. They should also publicise the methods of disposing other garbage materials like packaging boxes, thermacol etc. which end up in one of the open plots in the area. The civic body has failed us completely hence we are asking them to adopt these no man’s lands and clear them before they become hills of pure garbage,” said Bhojwani.

Sandeep Kadam, deputy commissioner, PMC zone 4, said, “We are aware of these chronic plots, and also aware of the work done by the Pune Waste Warriors, which is commendable. But these plots are no man’s land for these are big private plots of which some are under litigation. We have tried to minimise the garbage problem and have also appealed to the people to hand over their garbage only to PMC for collection but there are some who don’t pay heed to this. Also, most of the people throwing garbage in these said chronic spots are people travelling who throw garbage on to these spots.”