July 28: To reach the dark entrance of her first-floor tenement, Aruna Tipnis has to step over a drain choked with moss and slush, and go past overgrown foliage littered with plastic bags, paper and tins. At the end of the road down her building, garbage piles greet her with an unbearable stench. If somebody took note of a recent High Court directive to MHADA to clean up its transit camps, its not evident here in this camp located behind Magthane bus depot, Borivli (east).Assistant Estate Manager (transit camps) Vijay Kumar Limaye ``has not heard of any High Court order.'' It is the job of the maintenance department to look after transit camps, he said, refusing to answer any more queries. If the garbage heaps at the Borivli camp are anything to go by, maintenance department too is in the dark.V V Soni, a resident at the Borivli camp for 16 years now, is not waiting for anybody. Well aware that the sweeper comes just once a week, she and some building residents have decided to clean up the surroundingarea themselves. Rats are common visitors to the buildings, adds Virginia Martiss, who, fortunately enough, moves to her newly constructed flat next week after having spent over 14 years fighting the rodents and mosquitoes.Complaints made to the MHADA complaint office, which is in the same building, have proved futile. Sunil Chavan, who has lived in the building next to it since 1976, said: ``The maintenance of the camp is almost nil. Complaints about repairs are never attended to, and when they are, it is usually a shoddy job.''That is evident from his leaking roof, a broken bathroom in his neighbour's house, and a newly replaced, unpainted window in room number 21 on the ground floor with no bolts to put it in place. ``Work is given on private contract and no one bothers to check how it has been carried out,'' says a resident. A contractor of a painting job for four MHADA buildings was paid the full sum, despite only one building being painted.Yashoda Torankar, a resident of building No 1, room No 22for 10 years, complains of the stench from the common toilet next to her room. Her misery is compounded by a broken drainage pipe outside the toilet. The menace of mosquitoes due to stagnant drain water and rusted drain pipes, adds Neha Ingole, has led to sleepless nights. And during the rains, the rooms get flooded with drain water. This ensures that the infants and children run a high risk of disease. Neha's five-month-old daughter, she says, seems permanently afflicted by a cold. ``You will find a huge pile of uncleared garbage at the end of the road,'' she says smiling wryly as she guides you through the camp. Sure enough, there is one.
