BHOPAL: State capital may lose its rank in next cleanliness survey due to sale of meat in open areas around old Bhopal.
Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC) has built a compound in the area but the shopkeepers were reluctant to sit there.
A shopkeeper said the compound has no facility so we sell meat outside the compound.
A local resident Shah Faisal said that the area was cleaned once by BMC, but due to intervention of ‘influential people’ things are back to square one.
BMC officials say that there is a need for a permanent solution to this menace as sale of meat in open and the resulting filth bothers people in the neighbourhood.
We impose spot fine for releasing waste in the open, but they will have to be shifted to the covered campus they are allotted, they say.
The area has fish and meat markets, but there are little arrangements for disposal of waste.
Areas around Budhwara to Itwara and near Islampura have open markets for raw meat.
Here too sellers have been allotted shops inside a compound but they are reluctant to shift there as they want open space for visibility of their customers.
One of the areas where waste of meat was dumped for last several years, was cleared by BMC, but that area too has been encroached by meat shops.
Residents of area allege that local corproator Rafeeque Qureshi is sheltering the encroachers while Qureshi maintains shopkeepers will soon be shifted to a permanent area.
’Littering will not be allowed soon’
Rajesh Singh Rathod, additional commissioner in the BMC says that the areas have to be cleaned and no littering will be allowed and the shopkeepers will be shifted to a covered campus very soon.
‘City has potential to be the cleanest but … ‘
The secretary of housing and urban affairs ministry has lavished praise on the initiative of the Bhopal Municipal Corporation on Tuesday. Durga Shankar Mishra was in Bhopal and while seeing the initiative, he said the city has potential to be the cleanest city in India in a gathering. But, he was not aware of the sale of open meat in the state capital. The sale of the meat in open, will lead to loss of the points in the next cleanliness survey.
