The filth, the dirt, the piling garbage near the Lamphel supermarket can easily be linked to the pathetic failure of the Government to provide the needed market shed to the vendors who were displaced from Nagamapal sometime in 2011 and were told to go to Lamphel.
Insensitivity is written all over the conduct of the Government here and there isn’t a word strong enough to tear apart the utter lack of sensitivity of the Government.
Certainly does not make sense to remove women vegetable vendors from a market place and fail to provide an alternative site for them.
This is precisely what is happening at Lamphel today and the story published in the August 31 edition of this newspaper under the caption, ‘Lamphel area becoming a disease den’ should sum up the indifference of the Government.
Anyone who has had the opportunity or the misfortune of marketing at Lamphel near the Supermarket will get an inkling of the point that is sought to be conveyed here.
Apart from the pot holes filled, muddy road, that is when it rains, or dusty when the weather is dry, piles of rotting garbage with foul smell emanating, is the first sight to greet the shoppers.
Go into the market and the scene is more or less the same.
True there may not be piled up garbage of the same volume as seen at the entrance of the market, but the place is literally strewn with wastes, in the absence of any dumping place, where the vegetable vendors may dump their waste.
The situation is exacerbated by the fact that Imphal Municipal Corporation seems to have forgotten that they have a duty to take away the waste materials.
Far from removing the piling garbage, if what the locals say is true then it is the other way round, with trucks coming to this site and dumping waste material.
This is intolerable and is far removed from the Swachch Bharat mission championed by none less than Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself.
The market at Lamphel is the marketing place for people from the surrounding area, meaning Thangmeiband, Lamphel and students of RIMS.
Apart from this, the move to open a market at Lamphel is also in line with any move to decongest Khwairamband Keithel, where everyone go to shop, starting from a needle to something more fancy.
This is apart from the vegetables, fish and its by products.
The decision to relocate the market place from Nagamapal to Lamphel was in line to provide parking space to the numerous diesel autos which ferry passengers from different districts to Imphal, but the slip shod manner in which the move was executed is not at all satisfactory.
A look at the picture carried in The Sangai Express along with the news should tell its own story.
Hope the Government has taken note of the story for this is about keeping the market places of Imphal neat and clean and not only Khwairamband Keithel.
The people too need to see how they can help to keep the place clean and neat.
Source: The Sangai Express
