The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) will begin a week-long drive from next week to spot vulnerable garbage accumulation points in the city.

People can WhatsApp their complaints about garbage to 9073367883.

The drive will run between May 28 and June 3.

“Take a picture and send it to this number. We will clear the garbage from the place within four hours,” Debabrata Majumdar, the mayoral council member in charge of KMC’s solid waste management department, said on Friday while announcing
the drive.

Mayor Firhad Hakim said that while the special drive will be only for a week, the KMC’s solid waste management department will be watching the spots thereafter.

“These are spots where people throw garbage, and it keeps accumulating. During this drive, we will clean the spots. But this cleaning will continue even after the drive gets over. We will identify these places as black spots,” he said.

A special control room will be set up for the week-long drive.

A complainant will receive a “ticket number” against her complaint. Within two hours, the complaint will be escalated to the concerned borough office. The borough team will resolve the issue and send its feedback to the control room. The control room will inform the complainant.

Hakim said the KMC would study the black spots once the week-long drive was over.

A KMC official said the civic body wants to document these vulnerable points and bring a long-term resolution.

KMC officials said the drive had larger aims — to reduce garbage disposal in the open; to make citizens conscious of the need to keep the city free of garbage.

With monsoon approaching, the risk of vector-borne diseases increases.

“Any waste has containers where water can remain accumulated for days and turn into mosquito breeding sites,” said a KMC official.

Despite waste collectors visiting neighbourhoods in the morning, many residents throw waste on the road. There are places in a neighbourhood where people keep throwing waste.

The waste collectors, too, often do not collect accumulated waste.

If people point out these garbage accumulation sites, the civic body will ensure that these are cleaned.