Paradip: The civic body has initiated action to evict a depot of rotten prawns waste in the middle of a slum at Ward-5 in this town as it generated a stink and polluted the environment. The action came after Oriya daily Dharitri highlighted the issue in its Thursday edition.
The municipality’s executive officer Dilip Mohanty asked Prabhakar Lenka, the owner of the depot, to vacate the place within seven days and bury the rotten items immediately. As per the Solid Waste Management Rules 2016, one cannot keep material which pollutes environment near a human habitation, the authorities said.
Lenka is an influential individual. He dumps the prawn- heads and scales in the locality after collecting them from some nearby prawn processing units. He would sell this to poultry farms once they got decomposed. However, tonnes of decomposed prawn waste emitted a foul smell, which disturbed the residents. It was becoming difficult for people to pass through the stretch. The rotten shrimp depot breeded varieties of worms, and these often entered the houses of residents in the proximity. The unhygienic surroundings also helped in a proliferation of mosquito and fly populations. People in the slum are suffering from various vector-borne diseases after bitten by the mosquitoes, the locals have complained to the municipal authorities and state pollution control board officials.
On the other hand, Lenka threatened a few media personnel with dire consequences, and barred them from making a video of his depot, saying he was the owner of the land and he was free to use it as per his will.
He ran his “smelly” business smoothly by greasing the palms of some civic officials.
Paradip has recently come under the Smart City scheme and the Union Government would spend Rs 2,770crore for giving a facelift to the city. Integral to the central scheme is cleanliness and meeting of basic civic standards for the citizenry. However, the foul smell produced by more than eight prawn processing units at the entrance of the town and the massive dry fish trading along the state and national highways have made life miserable for both the locals and the visitors.
As it is extremely difficult to evict these units, the movers behind the concept of Smart City have a challenge before them, noted an official. PNN
