E-Paper
DM swings into action, guns for negligent officials
INEPT HANDLING of facilities that prevent discharge of domestic and industrial waste into the river has finally caught the attention of the authorities.
INEPT HANDLING of facilities that prevent discharge of domestic and industrial waste into the river has finally caught the attention of the authorities.
In a knee-jerk reaction, district magistrate Anurag Shrivastava has taken up the task of checking flow of effluents and waste into the Ganga and he has begun with probing into the ill effects being borne by the river, environment and public health. As soon as the findings reached him on Tuesday, the DM got down to identifying officials responsible for the sorry state of affairs.
He has decided to monitor the progress of all facilities personally and hold regular meetings with officials of pollution control board, Kanpur Municipal Corporation and the UP Jal Nigam.
“He’s sounded a warning to officials of the Jal Nigam against shirking responsibility,” a source said.
Moreover, the DM has taken up the matter of laxity of UP Jal Nigam with Principal Secretary (urban development) along with all facts and figures. When tanneries were being sealed on orders by the high court, another team of officials visited the pumping stations and treatment plants and found the plants at Chabileypurwa, Sheetla Bazar, Buriya Ghat and Wazirabad in a bad shape.
Not only were they not functioning, the costly equipment was either damaged or down with technical problems. The team members even video-graphed the domestic and industrial sewage flowing straight into the river.
On return they concluded that the river was getting polluted because of poor maintenance of facilities as 500 mld of domestic waste was going into the Ganga everyday.
The sources pointed out that the primary task the District Magistrate had fixed was to make the plants and pumping station operational in the shortest possible time.
