FACE OF THE WEEK

He keeps cities clean and green

Dehradun, January 7
A clean and green city with open spaces is the dream of every city resident but sadly the cities in the country are infested with garbage, encroachment and concrete buildings with very little green cover. The cities of Uttarkahand, a hill state known for its lush green trees, are no exception as well.

Thanks to crusader Harak Singh Rawat, Additional Mukhya Nagar Adhikari (Additional Chief Executive Officer), Dehradun Municipal Corporation (DMC), the situation in the cities where ever he worked has changed for the better.

In Dehradun as AMNA, he removed encroachments from various parts of the city, fought with work-shirking sanitary workers to make them collect garbage from door to door, introduced carts to carry garbage, twin dustbins for the segregation of bio-degradable and degradable garbage and its further
processing.

These days he has also been given charge of election affairs of Rajpur Road and is leading the drive to remove illegal hoardings/banners defacing the city walls and trees.

He has been instrumental in propelling people in planting thousands of walnut trees in Srinagar, Kirtinagar, Tehri where he worked in different capacities.

He has also been at the forefront in removing encroachments, be it 350 kiosks in Tehri in one go, rehris from the bazaars or hutments from slum colonies in Dehradun.

Taking a cue from his passion to serve society, villagers around Baigul river at Udham Singh Nagar dug land up to five metres around the river at his behest and straightened the course of the river, which otherwise had changed its direction and was causing floods in the villages.

The government assistance of Rs 2 crore asked for the same project came late but was utilised well to build a concrete embankment around the river.

But the timely action plan implemented by Rawat helped in minimising the massive damage triggered by the floods every year.

From his stint as tehsildar, Udham Singh Nagar, to Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM), Srinagar, in year 2004, he was able to enforce a ban on the usage of polythene bags and introducing Friends of Environment Scheme (FES). “Under FES, I hired the services of small-time scrap dealers to make them collect garbage from door to door,supplementing their income from a payout of Rs 10 from each resident. The garbage

would then be either recycled or used for composting likewise,” he said. To ensure that his mission continued ever after he left, he constituted committees with heads of local bodies and workers, which are functioning well now.

As SDM, Kirtinagar, in year 2007-08 and Tehri in 2008-09, he rode on success by replicating the same experiment.

His reputation of doing good work brought him to the Municipal Corporation of the capital city but the strong union culture and idle sitting attitude of sanitary workers spawned problems for him.

The workers stood against him on one pretext or the other, banking upon political patronage. Rawat’s patience paid off and everything fell into line.

Telling about his dream projects he said: “I want fund-strapped DMC to construct its own residential and commercial complexes on its vacant land and earn money from it to be used for works of public welfare. The trees should also be planted around rivers so that people do not throw litter in them and use the area for recreation.”