While thousands of people enjoyed a variety of tableaux depicting myths during Mangaluru Dasara on Friday night, they left behind tonnes of trash on the streets of the city.
Streets around Kudroli Gokarnanatha temple and those where the Dasara procession passed including Car Street of Mangaladevi temple were littered with garbage. Civic workers could be seen clearing up the piles that had a lot of plastic early Saturday morning. With hundreds of small stalls selling a variety of eatables during the festival season, delicacies were offered in plastic containers, cups and plates. The ban on plastic it appears, remained only on paper.
Joel Fernandes, a consulting interior designer, said no one wanted to strictly enforce the ban as it is a byproduct of petroleum refinery and any such move would reduce income to the government. “When we place revenue over the care of the earth, I don’t think we can make much of a headway,” he regretted.
The Mangaluru City Corporation (MCC) should have made adequate temporary arrangements to collect trash during the occasion, said Ganesh Kumar, a resident of Mannagudda. It is equally the responsibility of stall owners to keep a trash can and dispose it off later, he said.
Venugopal, a resident of Surathkal, asked whether the Swachh Mangaluru campaign undertaken by Ramakrishna Mission had enough of an effect on residents. If we were really sensitised, there would not have been mounds of trash on streets, he said. Only stringent punitive action against offenders could prevent the nuisance in public places, he added.
