Berhampur, Nov. 22: The municipal corporation's health department is grappling with staff shortage, which has taken a toll on the city's sanitation drive.
"We need more staff members and vehicles for a clean Berhampur," said the Berhampur Municipal Corporation's health officer Subhakanta Das.
The city has a road network of 415 kilometres, and its drains consist of a network of 453km. The total number of sanitation workers engaged for a city of 4.5 lakh population is 1,489. "Unless we recruit more workers, achieving the sanitation goal will be a Herculean task," Das said.
Of the 40 wards in Berhampur, sanitation in 26 is privatised.
"The civic body looks after sanitation in the remaining 14 wards. The number of workers available for sanitation in the 14 wards is only 550, of which about 100 are engaged in office management. On the other hand, the number of sanitation workers engaged by the private operator is more than 900," Das said.
There are 17 tractors, two dumpers with capacity of nine metric tonnes, five dumper pressure and four auto tippers engaged in disposing of the garbage. However, this is also insufficient to manage the entire job. "We need more vehicles to get the job done," Das said.
However, district collector P.C. Chowdhary insisted: "We have to make Berhampur clean by November and the city polythene free by January 1 next year."
In October, the district collector formed a 15-member group of officers, who visited several wards. A review meeting was also held at Town Hall today.
However, today's meeting focused on an awareness campaign to turn the city and the commercial hub of south Odisha "polythene free" from January 1. The district administration stressed on the need to involve students in creating awareness about the ill effects of polythene.
The administration has sealed a packaged water unit at Sukunda situated on the city outskirts.
"We have collected samples of water from the unit. We will take necessary action after the report is handed over," said Berhampur sub-collector Siddhartha Shankar Swain.
Similar raids will be conducted on more packaged water units in the near future, he said.
