Ranchi, May 13: Almost a year has passed since the Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC) initiated a massive clean up drive in the state capital. Yet the garbage collection and disposal system in the city still remain erratic. While in some areas, garbage is cleaned up punctually, in some other areas, garbage disposal takes place only in late afternoon or during peak traffic hours.

This does not surprise the RMC officials, however. They blame it on the insufficiency of tractors lifting the garbage. Incidentally, there is only one tractor, which lifts garbage from an entire ward (there are 37 wards in Ranchi).

?The RMC tractors leave the central store at 6:30 am. Each tractor has to pick up garbage from a locality, deposit it at a temporary dumping ground and then has to move over to another locality. In this way, each tractor makes five to six trips a day to collect garbage from one ward. So it collects garbage from some spots at seven in the morning while it takes the vehicle to reach some other spots at one in the afternoon,? said an RMC official.

RMC currently has a fleet of 48 tractors for garbage disposal among which some are lying non-functional while some others are fitted with water tanks to distribute water in distant localities.

While the corporation carries out cleanliness operations in 22 wards, a part of the job has been outsourced to three NGOs in the city.

RMC officials allege that people, particularly the shopkeepers, refuse to co-operate with them. ?We carry our first round of operation at 7 in the morning. But the shopkeepers, especially those owning food joints, litter the area within a few hours,? said RMC deputy administrator, Mukesh Verma.

Shopkeepers, however, have a different story to tell. ?Where shall we throw our garbage? We do not have dustbins nearby. The shops are cleaned at night and we are left with no option but to dump the garbage at a secluded spot beside the road,? said a restaurant owner near Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (Rims) at Bariatu.

Interestingly, the businessmen with food joints located on busy thoroughfares seemed satisfied with the garbage cleaning operations. ?I am satisfied with the work the RMC has been carrying out. With the huge amount of garbage that my restaurant disposes off daily, I could have been in trouble had their operations not been timely,? said Sameer Ghosh, who runs Jaljoga restaurant at Albert Ekka Chowk.

The corporation officials said hiring some more vehicles might help. ?Some of our tractors are currently being used to carry water to distant localities. So the cleanliness operations might be suffering to a certain extent. Furthermore, we do not have a proper dumping ground where we can dump the garbage,? said the RMC health officer, Rekha Rani Singh.

Rekha said the problem will aggravate further in the coming days. ?A total of 300 tonnes of garbage is collected in the city everyday. RMC has been dumping the collected garbage in a one-acre plot of land at Madhukum. The entire plot has now been overfilled and one heavy downpour might lead to an overflow in the adjoining areas,? she added.