Loading Garbage Trucks on City Roads is Unhygienic, Stinky & Creates an Eyesore!

Loading Garbage Trucks on City Roads is Unhygienic, Stinky & Creates an Eyesore!

Mangaluru: Trash is India’s, and for that even Mangaluru’s, plague. It chokes rivers, scars meadows, contaminates streets and feeds a vast and dangerous ecosystem of rats, mosquitoes, stray dogs and cows, and pigs. Perhaps even more than the fitful electricity and insane traffic, the ubiquitous garbage shows the incompetence of Indian governing and the dark side of the country’s rapid economic growth. Greater wealth has spawned more garbage, and the managers of the country’s pell-mell development have been unable to handle the load.

Apart from that, the trucks that haul the tonnes of garbage daily in Mangaluru City are creating a very unhygienic, stinky and safety hazard issue, which is an eyesore for this “Smart City”?. Garbage trucks that make you gag every time they whiz pass by you producing some stinky smell, but unfortunately nothing much could be done, since they have to rush the load to the dumping yard as quickly as possible. But what really bothers is that, when these larger garbage trucks park on the roads to get loaded with garbage from the smaller trucks, is something that needs to be addressed.

First of all there is lots of carbon monoxide that is emitted by these garbage trucks when they are on the move, but imagine when these trucks are parked for a long time on a busy road next to a mall, a religious institution, school, etc in order to get loaded, it creates a lot of health hazards when the people nearby have to inhale the toxic. Plus when these trucks are parked on the main roads during the loading time, the dirty water ( leachate) that leeches out of the compressed garbage trucks on to the road, leaving back dirty black patches (see pictures)- and you can see such black dirt laden roads at various locations where these trucks got loaded.

But why these garbage trucks have to be loaded right on the main roads? Why can’t they use some of the side mud portion of the thereby avoid dirtying the roads with garbage stains? Why can’t they use inner roads if they are available for loading? These are some of the questions needed to be put forth to the officials of Mangaluru City Corporation and to the higher officials of Antony Waste Handling Cell Limited. Loading garbage trucks on the main roads when motorists and pedestrians are moving around is totally a safety hazard. Such kind of loading should be done off the main roads, without creating any inconveniences to the public.

Look at the above photos where the city roads are laden with black garbage dirt

Apart from the time taken to load the bigger trucks with garbage from the smaller trucks, the pourakarmikas take their extra time digging into the garbage to find plastic bottles and other recycling items so that they could be sold to the scarp dealer. In the meantime, the nearby residents, and other citizens have to bear with the stench till the loading is done. Not a Smart Idea when our City is rated as a “Smart City”! Besides, when the vehicles are open during loading, the heaps of garbage are an eyesore and create a stink. I only wish the concerned officials of MCC and Antony Waste Handling Cell come up with an idea, to load these trucks anywhere else, other than the main roads. Thank You!