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Mohali: GMADA sleeping on garbage taking over roads
A drive down the main road near TDI City, Sector 117, near Patiala Ki Rao, welcomes commuters to vast heaps of garbage and animals rummaging through it — a shocking picture of civic apathy
In the absence of a dumping site and resource management centres in the areas under the Greater Mohali Area Development Authority (GMADA), garbage from such localities is pouring out onto roads, becoming not only an eyesore but also a major health hazard.
A drive down the main road near TDI City, Sector 117, near Patiala Ki Rao, welcomes commuters to vast heaps of garbage and animals rummaging through it — a shocking picture of civic apathy. If insanitation wasn’t enough, even cattle posing risk to commuters has failed to move the authority.
An over 100-metre stretch of the PR 7 slip road going towards Mullanpur, near New Sunny Enclave, has been completely taken over by stinking garbage, leaving little space for vehicles.
“Due to authorities’ lackadaisical attitude, residents here have to suffer the obnoxious stink daily. Seeing the garbage pile, all waste contractors also dump their loads here to avoid taking longer routes, further adding to miseries of residents and commuters. Often, the garbage is also set on fire, emanating toxic smoke,” complained Nirmal Singh, a resident of New Sunny Enclave.
However, Ranjiv Mankatala, DE, public health division, GMADA, blamed area residents for the situation: “Garbage from nearby areas, which come under the Kharar municipal council, is getting dumped here. We recently wrote to the Kharar SDM and Kharar civic body to make adequate arrangements for garbage collection. We will write to them again and get the garbage cleared at the earliest.”
An MC officer in turn accused GMADA of not having a proper waste collection system in place, marring the city’s beauty.
“GMADA doesn’t have a dumping site of its own, so the waste generated at its newly developed areas, including Aerocity, New Chandigarh, TDI City, etc, are dumped on roads and plots falling within civic body limits. Our resource management centres are closed by 5.30 pm after clearing all garbage from city roads, while the garbage from GMADA areas is dumped in the wee hours. The matter has been repeatedly flagged in meetings with GMADA officers, including the chief administrator, but to no avail,” an MC officer said, adding that GMADA needed to construct dumping points at the site itself while planning new projects.
According to sources, MC had also demanded a separate dumping site to process garbage from GMADA sectors, but no such arrangement has been put in place yet.
While GMADA chief administrator Rajiv Kumar Gupta, could not be reached, Mankatala said GMADA had come up with three resource management centres for waste processing.
“The centre for the waste of Sectors 88 and 89 has been set up in Sector 96 and two more have been established in Aerocity and IT City. The tenders will be allotted soon,” he said.
Notably, amid its shoddy waste management efforts, Mohali had ranked 113th among 382 cities in the 1 to 10 lakh category in the 2022 Swachh Survekshan, slipping 32 notches from previous year’s 81st rank.
