The New Capital circle of Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) has started imposing fine on people for littering public spaces. The drive has been started in the commercial area as of now.
PMC New Capital circle’s executive officer Shailesh Kumar on Thursday said the drive had been started in the market areas of Rajvanshi Nagar, Dakbungalow and Mithapur.
“Today only Rs 700 was collected as fine. Individuals are being charged Rs 100 for littering the public area. Right now we are only charging fine from shopkeepers. For households, the fine will not be imposed as of now as we have recently started door-to-door garbage collection and will start fining people only when the programme becomes successful,” said Shailesh, adding that a decision had been taken to act against sanitary inspectors if were found negligent in maintaining cleanliness in their areas.
The corporation had earlier decided about collecting fines from residents for throwing garbage in public spaces but the decision was not implemented because of opposition from residents.
Many residents had criticised the decision saying how could the civic body think about such move when it had a failed in its door-to-door garbage collection. “This is the reason the fine is being imposed on shopkeepers now,” said a source in the municipal corporation.
The corporation is also gearing up for Swachh Sarvekshan to be carried out by the Union ministry of housing and urban affairs from January 2019.
In the last two editions of the survey, the city could not receive good rankings. It ranked 312 out of 485 cities in the 2018 survey while in 2017, it ranked 262 out of 434 cities.
“A standard operating procedure has also been formulated in which the work of officials of the corporation has been defined. We are also going to use state-of-the-art machines for sweeping roads and others,” said a Patna Municipal Corporation official.
The Swachh Survekshan will be held in January but the municipal corporation’s sanitation drive till December will be assessed for the survey.
