With the municipal sanitation staff on strike for the 15th day, garbage bins are overflowing and stinking giving tough time to the residents in many colonies in tri-cities of Warangal, Hanamkonda and Kazipet here.
At Ramnagar, the residents were complaining that the garbage was not lifted for over a week and it had spread onto the main thoroughfare.
Rajanna, who runs a shop here, lamented that they were unable to live with the stink. “The garbage was rotten and animals spread it all over the road. The sanitation workers used to lift the garbage every day, but for more than a week nobody came this way,” he rued.
Over 2,000 personnel working in sanitation and water wings of GHMC were on strike demanding better wages. Except in two or three colonies of the 53 divisions, the sanitation was poor. There are 150 slums and a total population of 8.5 lakh under municipal limits.
At Kumarpally, Tailor Street, Reddy Colony, Ramanagar and in other colonies, drains were overflowing and garbage bins were overflowing with wastage.
M. Jayaprakash of Reddy Colony said the situation was turning from bad to worse with overflowing drains everywhere.
“We are unable to bear the stink from garbage bins. You see mosquitoes rising and soon people will have lot of trouble,” he pointed out.
CITU general secretary R. Ramesh, who was leading the striking employees, said the authorities were not serious on solving the demands. They wanted the employees to join duties first and later government would look into their problems.
The Greater Warangal Municipal Corporation was awarded the clean city award in the past and residents say they never expected the things to go wrong this way.
Mr. Ranga Rao, a pan vendor at Kumarpally, said the roads were untidy with garbage seen all over. “It is time that the strike ends and garbage lifted regularly,” he hoped.
Nizamabad Special Correspondent adds: Even as the municipal corporation authorities pressed into service the contract workers to remove and transport litter and garbage and ensured cleanliness on main streets, roads and colonies to an extent possible, heaps of litter got piled up in interior localities and slums as the sanitation workers continued to strike the work.
The problem is acute at Chandrashekar Nagar Colony, Ambedkar Nagar, Arundhati Nagar and at the localities predominantly inhabited by beedi workers.
The impact of the strike is more in Kamareddy and Bodhan municipal councils. The civic body authorities here managed to keep the surrounding clean with over 250 temporary workers.
Trade unions such as CITU, IFTU and AITUC affiliated to CPI(M), CPI (ML) and CPI respectively staged sit in protest before the corporation office demanding the immediate solution to the long pending demands of the sanitation workers.
Speaking on the occasion, the CPI(M) district secretary Dandi Venkati said that the government was unnecessarily going for prestige instead of solving the demands which would hardly burden the public exchequer an amount of Rs.250 crore.
Warning the government against intensifying the strike if it failed to address the issues soon, he said over 1,000 sanitation workers were striking the work in the district.
