SENDRA | May 27: Even though Imphal has been declared Northeast India’s third cleanest city after Gangtok and Aizawl in a nationwide cleanliness survey by Union Ministry of Urban Development recently, almost all important towns and habitation areas are encountering big challenges in managing their household wastes.
The situation is not so encouraging at the habitation in and around Loktak, the largest fresh water lake in India’s North Eastern region.
Sendra, a small village at Loktak located about 45 km south of Imphal is popular tourist site sum picnic spot in Manipur.
Hundreds of tourists visit here on a daily basis to enjoy the beauty of Loktak which provides livelihood to thousands of people and in the process the site becomes a dumping site of waste not only by the visitors but also by the residents because of absence of proper solid waste management system in the locality.
Considering the public requirement, residents of Ithing Sendra came out and started a public campaign under the theme “Green Thanga, Save Loktak & Clean Sendra” here on Saturday.
Besides collecting the household waste and others waste littered on the roads and tourist resorts, the Sendra residents and Sendra Youth Club volunteers of this popular tourist resort installed 30 dustbins around their localities to establish a proper solid management system in their locality for the first time.
“We’re trying to introduce a proper system to dispose our waste at a disposal site to keep our lake surrounding clean,” says Kh Budha, a key organiser of the campaign. Locals said the area where people use to dispose-off their waste is located near a popular Omba garden which is again located at Loktak area.
On hearing this, Planning and Development Authority Chairman and local MLA, Tongbram Robindro who represents Thanga constituency agreed to establish a proper solid waste management system in the area sooner or later by finding a new site as well.
Though there is no proper record, Oinam Maipakchao, president of Loktak Eco-tourism Development organisation said that Thanga, Ithing and Sendra villages all located at Loktak which have more than 3000 households, might have generated not less than 3 tonnes of waste daily which shows that all the important habitations of the state are encountering big challenges in managing their solid wastes.
Though Manipur’s State capital Imphal which generates 100 metric tons of waste daily was named as Northeast India’s third cleanest city after Gangtok and Aizawl as per nationwide cleanliness survey by Union Ministry of Urban Development recently, there is no report of segregating the household waste at source in Imphal till date not to speak of other towns.
Source: Imphal Free Press
