Stinking road to nowhere

TB Hospital Lab, Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narain Hospital, Govind Ballabh Pant Hospital and Guru Nanak Eye Centre. One would expect the road — Jawaharlal Nehru Marg — with all these health facilities will be cleaned daily, if not made spick and span. But the real situation is different.

TB Hospital Lab, Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narain Hospital, Govind Ballabh Pant Hospital and Guru Nanak Eye Centre.

HT Image

One would expect the road — Jawaharlal Nehru Marg — with all these health facilities will be cleaned daily, if not made spick and span. But the real situation is different.

Jawaharlal Nehru Marg is an important arterial road linking the Walled City with New Delhi. But travelling from Delhi Gate side towards Ram Lila Maidan, you are greeted with a dug up road on your left.

Then, between the doors of all the health facilities, there are garbage piles, big and small, before you reach the actual garbage dump.

Many a times, tonga-walas from the other side of the road park their vehicles and feed the horses on the opposite side. Needless to add, the horse dung adds to the garbage pile.

“I have always seen garbage overflowing… actually spilling over to the road. Sometimes it occupies more than half the road, which is not just dangerous for health but also poses a traffic hazard,” said Bhupesh Pandey, who travels daily on the road to reach Kamla Market for his work.

Said an eye centre official, “There are shanties lining the compound wall. Apart from the garbage outside the wall, we face problems due to these people throwing garbage inside the hospital premises too.”

The Eye Centre authorities have drawn attention of even the Chief Minister several times but to no avail.

MCD Director (Press and Information) Deep Mathur said, “We are very concerned about the road condition. The Commissioner has issued special instructions to the Deputy Zonal Commissioner to ensure that there is no accumulation of garbage on the road.”

For the debris on the roadside, Mathur said the MCD has recently started a construction and demolition material treatment plant at Jahangirpuri.

“We have worked out an arrangement to pick debris from such points and send it to process to this plant.”

However, there are no plans to prevent — and fine — people to prevent such instances.