Noida starts special Swachhta drive to make city cleaner

The Noida authority is on a month-long special cleanliness drive in all residential, industrial and commercial areas. It is also appealing to the general public to segregate the waste and then hand it over to the health department deployed staff who will go door-to-door to collect them.

People have been asked to segregate waste -- plastic, dry waste and wet waste -- in three dustbins.

Our teams are visiting different areas and appealing to people to help in waste segregation as it makes handling waste easier. We are covering markets and other areas one by one to asking them not to use plastic bags and stop throwing waste at undesignated spaces,” said S C Mishra, Noida Authority senior project engineer.

The drive has covered sectors 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 18, 23, 24, 27, 28, 29, 44, 45, 49, 50, 71, 99, 100 and122, among others. They have also covered villages such as Chhalera, Sadarpur, Nagli Wazidpur and Barola among others, said officials.

“We have also appealed to shopkeepers to not use single-use plastic, which is banned in the state. We imposed around R18,000 fine against at least 30 vendors for using plastic,” said Mishra, adding that their is not to impose fines, but to encourage people not to use polluting plastic.

“Stray animals are most affected as they eat plastic discarded on roads. Plastic was has choked most of the city’s drains too,” said N P Singh, president of GB Nagar district development residents’ welfare association.