Tirupati: No door-to-door garbage collection in Manchala street

Tirupati: The age-old Manchala Street at the heart of the temple city has been surrounded with several problems. Falling under the 36th division of Municipal Corporation, the area has nearly 2,000 houses with about 7,000 population being represented by Kudithi Subramanyam as Corporator.

The residents have been facing problems of daily garbage clearance and unattended side canals among other issues. The garbage collection staff, who need to come door-to-door daily to collect household garbage segregated by the residents in separate baskets, were not doing so. Instead of going door-to-door, they remain at a particular point and ask the residents to come and hand over the garbage to them. Still, user charges of Rs 60 are being collected from the residents.

This has been posing several problems as many residents go out early in the morning to attend their daily works leaving aged people at homes. The elderly people find it very difficult to carry the garbage to handover it to the sanitary staff.

When they point out the problem with the staff, they are only getting rude replies, who make it clear that it is the duty of households to hand over the garbage and the staff have no business reaching their homes.

Also, side drains in the area were totally unattended which were emanating a bad smell all the time. Further, they became mosquito breeding centres and causing health issues to residents. The narrow lanes in the area could be seen with the overflowing of UDS water and causing unbearable smell.

The residents lamented their repeated complaints to Corporation officials proved to be futile as no one cared to address the problems. The residents Saroja, Kamala and Haseena said they are leading a very miserable life with unbearable stinking drains and buzzing mosquitoes apart from irresponsible behaviour of litter collection staff. They said the Corporator never visited the area and showed concern to the issues being faced by the residents.

A TTD employee residing in this area questioned the very purpose of UDS when its water is always overflowing on the streets? Is this the Smart City, he questioned?