The planters in front of East End Apartments in Mayur Vihar Phase I Extension are still being used as garbage dumps, thanks to confusion in the PWD's horticulture and civil departments.
About two months back, Public Works Department (PWD) had started beautifying the planters running below the New Ashok Nagar Metro track. There were plans of fixing and painting the fences and planting saplings all along the stretch.
Mehkar Singh, a junior engineer (civil), the area in-charge, had said that the civil department would carry out fencing once the horticulture department had planted the saplings. Residents, however, were disappointed when the work came to a standstill after just a few weeks.
When City Spidey got in touch with the horticulture department to find out why the work had been left unfinished, an official said their role was just to plant saplings. “The road comes under the PWD's civil department. We stopped planting saplings because there was a lot of garbage that needed to be cleared first. It is not our job to clean the garbage. We will resume work only when the trash has been removed,” said Rampal Tomar, assistant director (East Delhi) of the horticulture department. “Our department had raised this issue at a joint meeting at the PWD head office in ITO. It was decided that the civil department would provide us a clean area to start planting saplings.”
The tender for planting was given to a private firm. “We were asked to plant 10,000 saplings and work had started off well," said Mahesh Sharma, owner of the firm. "We covered the stretches between eight Metro pillars before coming to a halt as a result of the garbage heaped on the planters. We are waiting for the horticulture department's go-ahead to resume work.”
When City Spidey contacted Naresh Kumar, engineer (civil), he said, “We will start fencing and road repair from November 10.” When asked whether the department was responsible for removing the garbage on the planters as well, he said, “That is the MCD’s job.”
Area councillor Nikki Singh said, “PWD is responsible for sanitation work on the roads. PWD roads comes under the MLA’s jurisdiction and not the councillor's.” She, however, added that she would send a sanitation team to clean up the area on November 9.
