Zero Garbage Campaign II
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: April 23 2011 -

THE ZERO garbage campaign which was launched with a great fanfare had slowly petered out to finally disappear altogether. The government has now announced that the campaign will resume.

The intended purpose of the campaign was most commendable and resumption of the campaign will be eagerly awaited by the people. It is only hoped that all glitches the campaign faced in its first phase will have been spotted and that the second phase would be an improvement on the first.

As a matter of fact, apart from the will and commitment to carry out the task, the tangible requirements are easily identified. First is the dump site(s), second the garbage collection sites in the city and third, the wherewithal to collect the garbage and take it to the dump site(s).

These would be the basic steps expected to be taken up by the government. A moment to think over though, if garbage piles up faster than it is being removed there will be complications because in Imphal garbage is mostly left in the open. In other words the means of disposal at the dump site(s) should be adequate.

On the other hand civil organisations which have extended a helping in the past can carry on with their praiseworthy work by launching an intense awareness programme. The awareness drive should emphasize on the health hazards and the pollution aspects of careless littering.

If they succeed in this work, Imphal can be one of the cleaner cities in the north east. On the pollution and hygiene front one related issue is the woeful shortage of public urinals and public toilets.

In more advanced cities garbage collection and disposal is a continuous work. The work is successful because the people have learned as a way of life to store garbage in storage bins or heavy duty plastic bags.

This might not be quite successful in Imphal because of the heavy expenditure that will have to be incurred. In our case the timings of the garbage collection rounds will be crucial.

Imphal may be a city but it is a very compact city and going through the rounds of garbage collection, unless it is done early in the morning or after market hours, will interfere with the market activity.

Whatever else, resumption of the zero garbage campaign is most welcome because the tax paying shopkeepers and vendors deserve a cleaner working place. And for the public at large they too deserve a cleaner city.

Imphal as we all understand is the mirror of the state, it epitomises Manipur.