The Uttarakhand Human Right Commission (UHRC) has sent a notice to the Municipal Corporation of Dehradun (MCD) for burning of waste in open near Sahastradhara area. The commission has asked the officials to answer and send a status report regarding the complaint within a time span of four weeks.
When asked to comment on the issue, the Municipal commissioner, MCD, Vinay Shankar Pandey said, “The notice has been sent to our legal cell and proceeding in this will be done accordingly.” He declined to comment any further on the issue.
It is worth mentioning here that the MCD in the past too had received complaint of burning the garbage in open areas especially near Rispana and Bindal from concerned citizens. However, officials have denied the complaints and claims. When asked about the notice from the health department of the MCD, senior municipal health Officer, RK Singh said, “The order has not reached us yet. We have given strict orders to our workers and sanitation officers to keep a proper check in this. We also have the proper management to dispose of the garbage at the solid waste management plant situated in Seeshambada so this is obvious that no worker will burn the garbage in open.”
It is important to mention that the MCD has a modern plant for the disposal of garbage. And if the complaint filed by the complaint is true then it raises a very serious question mark on the functioning of the MCD. Interestingly MCD too asks people not to burn garbage in open.
The waste management plant at Seeshambada, which started in the year 2018 has been build with a budget of Rs 40 crore. The plant has a capacity of 600 tonnes however the city only produces 300-tonne garbage a day. An official from the MCD stated that the complaint of garbage burning probably came from the 40 newly added wards as MCD has been failing to provide proper door to door garbage collection service in these specific wards.
When asked about effect on health by open burning of garbage, senior physician, Dr Praveen Panwar said, “Air pollution is one problem that is very common. If we see the heath related aspect then burning of garbage can cause serious problems to the asthma patients or to the patients suffering from breathing disease. The fumes if get mix with air can also cause various skin diseases.”
