Ruing the garbage menace and authorities’ inaction, city-based environmentalists along with the activists from Public Action Committee Sutlej and Mattewara staged a peaceful protest in front of mayor Balkar Singh Sandhu’s residence here on Sunday.
The activists said the civic body has failed to manage solid waste, construction and demolition waste, which is scattered in the entire city making it fill with illegal dumping points.
The environmentalist said MCL ( municipal corporation Ludhiana), including the mayor, should resign accepting moral responsibility for poor performance of municipal corporations.
Talking about the issue, Kapil Arora and Jaskirat Singh of Council of Engineers (CoE) said, “The municipal authorities have failed on every front, be it solution to waste management problems or any other civic woes of the city. The authorities have lied even to the National Green Tribunal (NGT) in the district environment plan with different laughable claims like 50% segregation of domestic waste being achieved in Ludhiana. The monitoring committee appointed by NGT itself estimated that to be around 5%. The performance of MCL is totally unacceptable and we demand the resignation of the mayor on these grounds.”
He further said CoE has sent an email to the chief minister Bhagwant Mann on the performance of the MCL to demand investigation of reasons of the sub-standard work being done by MCL authorities for a long time and to take action as per law.
{{/usCountry}}He further said CoE has sent an email to the chief minister Bhagwant Mann on the performance of the MCL to demand investigation of reasons of the sub-standard work being done by MCL authorities for a long time and to take action as per law.
{{/usCountry}}Advocate Ravinder Singh of Action Group against Plastic Pollution said, “The banned plastics are available in every nook and corner of Ludhiana and MCL is responsible for checking and stopping them. These plastics are seen in truckloads on every legal and illegal garbage dump of Ludhiana. Municipal authorities have been sleeping over the issue all these years and such protests are needed to wake them up from their slumber.”
Colonel Chander Mohal Lakhanpal of Sangharsh Committee said, “The entire functioning of municipal corporations is in a mess and there is no proper system of managing waste. The MCL takes decisions on an ad-hoc basis due to which critical services are suffering. We demand that the new AAP government should look into their performance immediately and discipline them. We also demand that the present elected leadership of the MCL should resign on performance grounds and should be replaced with those who can get the work done.”
Kuldeep Singh Khaira and Mohit Saggar of Public Action Committee said, “This is our fifth regular Sunday protest on the solid waste management and we have come to mayor’s house after selfie-point protests did not yield desired output from municipal authorities.”
The protestors announced that they will do their next protest right outside Guru Nanak Bhawan on March 28 onwards to ensure that every councillor arriving there for the meeting of the house knows the plight and sentiments of the citizens when they do their deliberations inside.