More than 200 residents of the densely populated, Telephone Exchange Road, Dhoatand-Sastrinagar east on Sunday took out a protest march and carried out a demonstration at Dhanbad Municipal Corporation against the ongoing construction work of a Static Garbage Compactor Transfers station in their area, situated near the trade and commerce hub of the district.

The protesters bearing banners and posters congregated at the compactor station at around 8am under the banner of Nagrik Parshad, Telephone Exchange Road/Dhoatand Sastri Nagar East and took out a march passing through Telephone exchange road, Jharia pul, Birsa Chowk and J.P. Chowk before reaching in front of the Bank More office of Dhanbad Municipal Corporation at around 8.45 am where they staged demonstration for more than half an hour.

The protesters comprising of traders of Bank More as well as residents of Telephone Exchange road, Joraphatak etc who were visibly aghast over the DMC decision to construct the garbage compactors station in their area were also perturbed over the silence of people’s representatives and district administration and also expressed their resentment against them through slogans like Dhanbad prashashan hai hai; Dhanbad vidhayak murdabad; Dhanbad sansad murdabad; nagar ayukt murdabad; nagar ayukt ki manmani nahi chalegi; kachra dump nahi chalega; tanashahi nahi chalegi; nagar ayukt ki manmani nahi chalegi etc.

Talking to The Telegraph Online on Sunday, Prabhat Surolia, convenor of resident’s forum which organised the protest programme today, said “We have resorted to the extreme step of coming to street after all our earlier steps to convince the DMC and other relevant authorities through letters and meetings have failed to yield any response.”

“We also met, Banna Gupta, state and family welfare minister and brought the issue of construction of garbage compactor station in the densely populated area, which will affect the health of people living in the area and he also assured to personally look into the issue and also forwarded our letter to Dhanbad district administration but there is no perceptible change in ground realities as the surface digging work as well as boundary wall laying work began forcing us to come on streets,” said Surolia.

“The land on which construction work for the compactor station has been launched belongs to Railways and they had given an NOC to DMC for developing a park but the DMC instead of developing park to beautify the area has chosen to construct the garbage compactor station compromising the health of one and all,” said Surolia and added that they have raised the issue with Railway authorities also about the misuse of land.

Anup Samanta, Executive Engineer of Dhanbad Municipal Corporation said, “We are facing difficulties in finding land for construction of garbage compactor station and if there is some confusion among the people we will resolve the issue by holding talks with them.”