Times of India: Chennai: Monday,
March 31, 2014.
When he took
charge as mayor on October 25, 2011, Saidai S Duraisamy said he would make
Chennai spick and spanking clean like Singapore.
Singapore? A
desultory walk through any part of the city will reveal that the city is
farther away from the Southeast Asian city-state than ever before.
The
corporation has allowed garbage clearance and sanitation to go from bad to
worse, while claiming to spend crores of rupees for the purpose, and has failed
to take action against people who litter the streets or urinate and defecate in
public.
Statistics
from the civic body show that officials have either not fined anyone or
penalised a handful of offenders across the city's 15 zones.
Only five of
the 15 zones Alandur, Manali, Madhavaram, Perungudi and Sholinganallur
responded to an RTI petition seeking data on steps taken to keep the city
clean. Officials from Alandur and Manali admitted that they have not booked
anyone in the last two years.
Perungudi
zone collected a paltry Rs 5,000 in fine for littering over the past two years
and Sholinganallur, Rs 8,000.
In contrast,
several other metros have in recent times stringently enforced rules against
people caught littering. Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, for instance, has
started taking steps such as offering offenders the choice of paying a fine or
doing community service, like sweeping streets or whitewashing graffiti. It
collects an average of Rs 1 crore each year for spitting in public.
Bruhat
Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike is installing surveillance cameras across Bangalore
to catch civic offenders in the act. It has also aggressively promoted source
segregation of garbage. Youth action groups like Wake Up Clean Up, Make a
Difference, TGLM and The Ugly Indian also help keep Bangalore clean.
In Chennai,
corporation officials say, inspectors who should be enforcing the rules have
been deployed to monitor Amma canteens. They also say they're busy with efforts
to prevent mosquitoes and rodents from breeding, a task at which they have
proved unsuccessful.
In The Times
Of India-IMRB Quality Of Life Survey, it came as little surprise when
respondents said Chennai lacks civic sense. They gave the city a rating of 2 on
a scale of 1 to 5 for sanitation and ranked it seventh on a list of the eight
cleanest metros in the country.
An
ex-bureaucrat says the civic body has failed to enforce rules. "How well
rules are enforced depends on how earnest officials are. Unfortunately, they
are concerned about other things," he said. "Corporation officials
and residents lack civic sense," said environmentalist Dharmesh Shah.
"The
officials should first caution people against throwing garbage on the road and
then fine them if they persist."
Corporation
deputy commissioner (health) T Anand was unavailable for comment.