Hyderabad: Despite several awareness campaigns about the hazards of burning waste instead of composting, people are still brazenly doing it in the open.
Likhita Hansraj, a resident of Calvary Temple road in Miyapur, woke up from her afternoon nap to the burning smell and panicked wondering if it came from her kitchen.
“While I was relieved it wasn’t from my home, I was shocked to see the smoke billowing from the open space behind our apartments. Apparently, this wasn’t the first time waste was burnt like this after waiting for weeks together for it to be cleaned up,” she said.
Her attempts to educate the members in her apartment proved unfruitful, she said. “Because the municipal body has not been doing its duty of picking up garbage regularly, they have no choice but to burn it all up rather than bear the stink,” she said.
Tarun Yellareddy, a resident of Balanagar too saw the watchman of his neighbouring apartment burning the waste and cautioned him against the same but in vain.
“Nobody in the society cared for it, they stopped for a while only to do it again,” Yellareddy added. His wife Rupa said that sometimes they bank on rag pickers to get the area cleaned. “We pay them to do the job for us. But they’re not here always and there needs to be a permanent end to this problem,” she told Deccan Chronicle.
Vijay Vangla another resident of Miyapur, where the waste was recently burned this week opposite Sri Chaitanya college on the Calvary temple lane said that repeated calls to the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) fell on deaf ears.
While one GHMC official claimed that the said issue was not brought to their notice, another said that he has directed his subordinates to do the needful and be taken care of, within a week.
