The city’s unending problem of poor sanitation came to the fore again with the corporators pouring out their woes at the municipal council meeting here on Wednesday attended by Mayor Koneru Sridhar and Municipal Commissioner J. Nivas.
Poor sanitation because of dearth of staff was raised by ruling party member G.V. Narasimha Rao representing the 23rd division in Krishnalanka. “The strength of allotted staff is 55. There are 43 workers now and 10 of them will be absent on any given day. Five or six permanent workers cannot work due to ill health,” he said.
Opposition party member B. Vijaykumar representing the 50th division contended that 5% fall sick on a daily basis and another five skip work by bribing the inspector.
TDP corporator Jasti Sambasiva Rao said the sanitation had improved a lot in the beginning but had deteriorated in the recent past. “The main reason is the lack of staff. The number of allotted staff and the working staff never tallies,” he said.
Corporator G. Mahesh said once he had to pick up the tools and start cleaning the streets due to non-availability of the staff.
YSRCP floor leader B. Punyaseela, Gurram Kankadurga and Gade Adilakshmi said most of the workers were in their fifties and unable to visit the hill slope colonies for the door-to-door garbage collection.
As the rest of the corporators began to join the fray, Mr. Sridhar stepped in and said the problem of absenteeism had been persistent in the city. “I have been asking the assistant medical and health officers to go into the field and get reports of sanitation work on a daily basis but none does it. What is wrong in getting an acknowledgement from the corporator?” Mr. Sridhar asked.
Mr. Sridhar also said the agreement with the SHG groups was the local heads had to pay the Corporation ₹100 per day as fine if they failed to supply the promised number of workers which had been ignored.
