Dirty, messy, stinking Imphal : Piling garbage
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: October 17, 2022 -

When it rains it is all about leikhom-leinang and when it doesn’t it is all about uphul-waiphul. Welcome to Imphal.

It is dirty and filthy and there cannot be two ways about it.

Fit the plastic menace into place and here is the perfect recipe to sketch the filthy capital of a State and Imphal fits this description snugly.

An indifferent people who have no qualms about making the place as messy as possible, where every corner on the road is an open place to urinate, where every wall or a lamp post is the perfect spot to spit, where every khongbans or nullahs that run through each and every leikai is the best dumping site and here is a brief description of Imphal.

Says something profound that the Imphal Municipal Corporation is unable to put into service the garbage collecting trucks daily and everyone in Imphal have to wait for days for the truck to come to collect the domestic waste.

Difficult to digest that a corporation is unable to collect the daily domestic waste from about 6.11 lakh inhabitants of Imphal and this is where questions ought to be raised on the lethargy of the Imphal Municipal Corporation.

Go to Nagamapal, the western side of Ima Keithel, BT Road or the Lamphel Super Market and one is sure to be greeted by piled up wastes any time of the week or day.

Take a look at any of the khongbans or nullahs at any leikai and one is sure to be greeted by the clogged water ways.

An ineffective IMC, a Government which does not seem to be bothered at all by its order to ban single use plastics including the ban on half a litre capacity of packaged drinking water and the result can be seen in the mess that dots every single road of Imphal.

Add an unthinking, selfish people and the sum total can be seen in the mess and filth that gathers all over the place at Imphal.

This is Imphal and so while people have to walk through the mud and slush when it rains and bear the dust during the dry season, no one seems to have given any thought on how to make Imphal fit the bill of a place which is trying to make it to the list of a Smart City.

Perhaps it would help for the State Government to get in touch with some of the bigger cities across the country and see how they keep their Municipalities and other local bodies functioning.

It will also help that much more if inputs can be gathered from some of the other cities on waste management.

Yet at the same time it should also be remembered that what works at Pune or Delhi may not necessarily work here and this is where it becomes important to discuss the issue with experts.

Or why not invite some urban town planners from across the country and get their feedbacks on how to keep Imphal cleaner than its present state ?

It will also not hurt for the Government to crack down on those who violate the directives of the Imphal Municipal Corporation and other civic bodies to keep the place clean.

Impose heavy fines and for habitual offenders, explore the possibility of packing them off to jail for some time.

When people refuse to listen to reasoning, then perhaps the time is right to bring out the rod and tell all to fall in line.

The manner in which dirt and garbage are disposed and allowed to pile up at every corner in Imphal is an eye sore and it is time for the Government to demonstrate that it means business.

It is also equally important to remember that it has a bounden duty to implement what it has already announced.

This is not the time for paper work and reality demands that work should be done at the ground level.

Crack the whip on all defaulters and implement the ban on single use plastic effectively.

Manipur cannot afford to continue living on orders which are passed just on paper.