Paradip: If you have visited the beach here, the most attractive place in this port town, you might have noticed scavengers at work. But the procedure they undertake to get the beach cleaned might have missed your attention.
The civic body here has roped in a private firm to get the beach cleaned on a daily basis. This firm has employed a number of men to scavenge. Interestingly though, these men pile up the garbage at a place, then dig a hole on the beach itself and start burying everything in it.
While this practice is said to be followed on a regular basis, nowadays it has been more so in view of the Local Self-Government Day scheduled to be observed August 31.
The civic body has beautified and illuminated the beach attracting thousands of revelers. They can be seen spending their time here from evening to night every day. Consequently, the number of fast food stalls has also ballooned. Boozing sessions are also common on the beach at night.
And in the mornings, a huge amount of plastic and glass bottles, glasses, paper plates, paper pieces etc are seen strewn the beach.
In order to give the beach a cleaner look, the scavengers have been engaged by the private firm.
As it is tiresome, time consuming as well as expensive to collect the garbage and ferry them to a distant place for dumping, they have found the easy way out to bury them on the beach itself.
They usually dig up holes at a minimum gap of 20 to 25metres gap. After putting the garbage they cover them up with sand.
“We fail to understand the way they clean the beach. They bury the garbage in the beach itself. Later when the upper layer of sand gets removed due to either wind or people walking on the beach, the garbage resurfaces,” a local resident alleged.
When asked, an employee engaged for cleaning the beach said they are doing as directed by the contractor. “We do it this way every day,” he added.
Contractor Anath Sahu refuted the allegation, saying they are burying only the twigs and leaves washed on to the shore and not plastic bottles and polythene bags.
While talking to Orissa POST, Paradip municipality executive officer Dillip Kumar Mohanty said, “We have not asked to treat the garbage in the alleged way. We have just come to know the way the contractor is dealing with the garbage. We will take stringent action in this regard.”
Government and private organisations are carrying out cleanliness drive under ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’ all over the country. But it is quite different in Paradip, observed another local.
PNN
