If you are at Kakinada city in Andhra Pradesh's East Godavari district, think twice before littering roads. The station workers will bring the garbage back to your house, or worse you can be fined after one warning.
This as per a new cleanliness initiative by Kakinada Municipal Commissioner Swapnil Dinakar Pundkar, announced on Saturday.
Pundkar took the decision after seeing a woman throw garbage on a road, while station workers were on waste-collection duty.
Pundkar, who was supervising the work, immediately asked a worker to take the garbage back to the house of the woman. When the shocked house owner tried to resist, the municipal commissioner explained to her not to litter roads, but hand it over to the station workers who come to collect garbage.
"If any person is found littering roads, he or she will be warned first. If caught again, a fine will be imposed on them. This is our attempt to create awareness in the public," he said.
Pundkar added there are 900 station workers in Kakinada, exclusively for collecting garbage. "They collect garbage from 7 am to 9 am. Every house is given an RFID ("radio frequency identification) tag, which the station worker scans so that their physical presence at every household is registered. Most people are responding well to this, but not all," he said, adding that in the next three months, garbage collection will be categorised into wet and dry.
"Now, we are collecting all kinds of garbage together. After three months or so, we will start collecting dry and wet garbage separately. People have a habit of throwing garbage near waste bins, rather than inside them. So we are planning to remove the dumper bins in the city within a year. We want Kakinada to stand ahead in the race for Smart Cities. Station and cleanliness are our priorities," he said.
( With inputs from ANI )
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