Stink from garbage dumped on vacant plots in New Town are forcing residents of housing complexes and cooperative societies to keep the doors and windows of their house shut.
The residents also keep the windows shut because of mosquitoes at a time when dengue cases are on the rise in the township as well as Salt Lake and areas along VIP Road.
The Telegraph drove around New Town on Monday and Tuesday and spotted heaps of garbage strewn across several vacant plots in action areas II and III.
In Action Areas II, a large empty plot resembled a garbage dump near the land allotted for the construction of the Calcutta High Court complex.
In Action Area III, garbage was spotted dumped on empty plots behind DLF New Town Heights and Sukhobrishti Housing Complex.
Astha Pramanick, pursuing a postgraduate course in international relations from Jadavpur University and staying in Action Area II B, said over the past few months they had been forced to keep the doors and windows of their apartment shut at all times.
“We are not able to keep the doors and windows open for more than five minutes because of the stench. Another problem is that it seems mosquitoes seem to have increased a lot and we are in constant fear of contracting dengue,” said Pramanick.
This newspaper spotted discarded plastic cups, Styrofoam trays, tyres and even used sanitary ware lying on the roadside and on the vacant plots.
Another New Town resident, Soumendranath Mondal, who stays in a cooperative housing society, said he had spotted trucks driving down to vacant plots and dumping garbage.
Another plot in the same area from where garbage was removed on Tuesday
“It is not just stench but one can see mosquitoes buzzing in places where garbage is being dumped rampantly,” Mondal told The Telegraph on Tuesday.
A New Town Kolkata Development Authority official said that they were aware of the issue and had already asked their teams to clean up these sites.
On Tuesday, teams cleared up the garbage dumped on the plots in Action Area II B.
During an internal enquiry, it was found that several teams were dumping waste on empty plots in order to reduce trips to the dumping grounds.
The garbage generated from New Town used to be dumped at Moller Bheri. But it has stopped following an order issued by the National Green Tribunal that bars the dumping of waste at this landfill site as it is close to the East Kolkata Wetlands. Now, an alternative dumping ground has been created at Patharghata, which is quite far from New Town.
NKDA chairman Debashis Sen said they have cautioned all the teams. At least a dozen dengue cases have been reported in the past week.
