Irked, residents dump garbage on road over lack of sanitation

Rotting food and wood created a veritable nauseous combination on the crossroads even as large vehicles such as buses and trucks attempted to navigate through the angry crowd.

Rakesh Patel, a local resident, told The Indian Express, “First, we had to suffer floods in our homes and while the water is still there and many houses still do not have electricity, now we have to deal with filth and the diseases that come with it. There has not been a single garbage pick-up here in the past three days and even after representation to our MLA, no garbage pick-up has come here. So we decided to put the garbage on the street. They can pick it up from there.”

Incidentally, at this point a municipal corporation garbage truck passed the area, leading to several young men heckling the staff and asking them to pick-up the garbage from the street.

There was no police presence in the vicinity even an hour after the dumping commenced at 3:30 pm, leading to a growing pile-up even by 5 pm.

The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, which sent sanitation workers to Vadodara, shared a video on X Thursday purportedly showing a society in the Karelibaug area being cleaned up by its men with people applauding their work.

Meanwhile, Minister of State for Home Harsh Sanghavi, who visited Vadodara just before Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel landed, told mediapersons that in addition to the nine teams of Fire and Rescue services of the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC), sanitation workers were pressed into action along with teams from civic bodies of Surat, Anand, Chhota Udepur and Bardoli.

“We have called in teams for sanitation and health from other cities and towns which will arrive in Vadodara by Thursday night… As many as 13 pumping stations were closed due to waterlogging, of which 10 have been resumed. A team has been formed to ensure that Kapurai and Chhani pumping stations are functional soon,” the minister said.

Sanghavi added that 400 MLD water will be distributed with super chlorination and the VMC had deployed 45 tankers to provide water in flood-affected areas. He also said that 125 metric tonnes of garbage have been removed with the help of additional tractors and JCBs from various civic bodies.

The minister also appealed to private doctors to visit affected areas where diseases could follow the flooding.

With inputs from Aditi raja