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After fire at Kalwa, TMC starts nullah cleaning
Following the disruption of railway services due to a fire in a nullah on Friday, Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) started cleaning nullahs along railways tracks
Following the disruption of railway services due to a fire in a nullah on Friday, Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) started cleaning nullahs along railways tracks at Kalwa to prevent such incidents.
The railway officials said that they had sent a letter to the civic body to clean the nullah near the Kalwa tracks regularly.
TMC claimed that though the nullahs are cleaned regularly, slum dwellers throw garbage in the nullahs every day. There are many slums along the railway tracks in Kalwa.
On Friday, train services were disrupted for over 30 minutes after a fire broke out in the garbage dumped inside a nullah along the railway tracks in Kalwa. Trains had to be halted because smoke disrupted train services
The Thane civic body has begun the work of cleaning the nullah, a day after fire.
Ashok Burpulle, deputy municipal commissioner of TMC, solid waste, said, “We are going to remove the floating waste from the nullah. We are also cleaning other nullahs along the railway tracks in Kalwa.”
He added that the nullahs belong to the railways and cleaning work has been undertaken in coordination with the railway authorities.
The railways has claimed that the nullah was unclean despite reminders.
A senior railway official from Kalwa station said, “Though the nullahs are in railway’s jurisdiction, TMC has the responsibility to clean the nullah. We had written to TMC a few weeks ago to clean the nullah to avoid any such incidents. After Friday’s fire, we have sent a reminder following which the cleaning work was undertaken.”
A TMC official, who did not wish to be named, said, “The roads are so narrow that garbage vans cannot reach the areas. We have appointed a garbage collector to go door to door and pick up garbage from the slums. The slum dwellers have to pay the garbage collectors Rs10 a month. However, many people do not want to pay and instead throw garbage into nullahs.”
Nullahs have to be cleaned twice a year
The nullah-cleaning work is carried out twice a year —before monsoon and in October or November. This year, no clean-up was undertaken in monsoon.
The TMC official said, “We used to float tenders in October to clean nullahs post-monsoon. However, while the pre-monsoon cleaning was up to date, most contractors did a shoddy work in post-monsoon cleaning. After we realised that bills were submitted despite shoddy work, we did not give contractors post-monsoon cleaning contracts this year.”
He added that this does not mean that nullahs aren’t cleaned. “We clean wherever there is a massive accumulation of floating garbage.”
