At Aretamma Colony in Puttur Municipality, like other places, defunct street lights is a common sight. Power interruptions have become order of the day. The public say they had approached the civic authorities on this issue more than a dozen times in three months.
With no response from them, the residents are directing their questions and anger towards ward volunteers. The residents have asked them not to visit their locality unless the street light problem is fixed.
‘Obstacle-ridden path’
Their demands have made it embarrassing and difficult for the volunteers to go about their daily business. Once gripped by enthusiasm, they are now finding the going tough.
A volunteer’s work nature include verifying voters and Aadhaar linkages for various government schemes, asking the public to clear all taxes to the civic bodies to avail benefits of welfare schemes and going through land records of farmers and collecting photocopies of the same and other similar errands.
But with viral fevers still rampant all over the district, they are going the extra mile to create awareness on sanitation among the public.
On one such occasion, Sujatha, a ward volunteer in Puttur, and her team asked the households to separate dry and wet waste. But they received no response from the public. “Instead, we were asked to take up fogging. The public ridiculed our errand. For the lapses of the sanitation workers, we faced the music,” Sujata said.
Another male volunteer at Chittoor, an MBA graduate, said that they were once asked to clean the choked drains. He said that a household tried to offer ₹100 to his five-member team, that was organising a awareness drive on civic taxes, asking them to clear the bushes in and around.
‘No cooperation from public’
Most of their questions are not even related to what the volunteers are asked to accomplish by their higher-ups, said Bala, a health worker of Puttur Municipality, adding that they are hesitant to approach the households for a second time, fearing repeat questions on unsolved civic issues.
In this backdrop, many volunteers feared that in the absence of cooperation from the households, their targets would be left pending, which in turn affect their performance and possible removals.
