Garbage dumped on a roadside in Gaya. Picture by Suman

Gaya, Aug. 6: Famous world over as a sacred hub, infamous for its filth. That’s Gaya for you.

Agencies responsible for carting garbage in the city have changed over the years. But the ugly face of the city has not.

First, it was the responsibility of the municipality to ensure cleanliness. After cholera outbreak several decades ago, the government constituted Lodging House Committee to supplement the efforts of the municipal body.

Recently, a Hyderabad-based private firm was given the responsibility to clear the garbage of the town. But the agency, Ramkay Engineers Pvt Ltd, is yet to live up to the expectations.

Mechanised sweeping and door-to-door garbage collection is still a far cry.

Several dignitaries have expressed their displeasure over the filth in Gaya.

Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee complained about the filth and mosquitoes when he was in the town a few years ago. He had to spend sleepless night at his Circuit House room.

Vajpayee is not alone to complain about the Gaya filth. While shooting for his national award winning film Patang in the nineties, versatile actor Om Puri, expressed his disgust at the Gaya dirt.

He had said he felt like picking up a broom to clean Gaya streets. Puri reiterated his feelings during a visit to the town earlier this week.

A Madhya Pradesh politician visiting the town recently for performing some rituals said that had he been aware of the sanitary conditions of the town, he would not have come here.

A few months ago, the Union minister for urban planning Kumari Sailja took the city civic authorities to task for dumping waste along the National Highway 85 and the banks of Falgu.

About three decades ago, the Gaya Municipality was upgraded to a municipal corporation. But it did not really help.

According to Shambhu Gupta, a resident of old Gaya, the upgradation of the civic body only made things worse. The mandatory pre-monsoon cleaning of the major drains was either given a go by or some cosmetic cleaning was done, said Gupta.

The senior citizen complained that though service latrines were officially banned more than two decades ago and subsequently the municipal body scrapped the practice of scavenging.

But service latrines continue to exist in several localities of eastern, southern and western Gaya. Even human excreta are flushed in the open drains and can be seen floating in waterlogged areas.

Till recently, service latrines were functional in some of the government quarters near the Gaya Central jail.

Conceding that the sanitary condition was far from satisfactory, corporator Lalji Prasad said Ramkay Engineers Pvt Ltd would need time to put its act together and fully honour the commitments made in an MoU it signed with the Gaya Municipal Corporation.

As per estimates, about 250 metric tonnes of waste is generated daily in the 53 wards of the Gaya Municipal Corporation. The municipal body has got a 25-acre dumping ground in village Naili.

But in order to save fuel and time, the drivers of the waste carriers allegedly dump the garbage on the outskirts of the city and the banks of Falgu, prompting the authorities to issue a ban on dumping municipal waste along the river. Social Activist Ali Hussain, however, said the rule was being violated blatantly.