BHUBANESWAR: The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Monday launched two drives in the last 24 hours in order to give a facelift to the State Capital and promote 'Swachh Bhubaneswar'. The civic body started a poster cleaning drive to keep public property clean along with night sweeping.
A BMC team on Monday removed posters that were fixed unauthorisedly on boundary walls of houses as well as offices in Jagamara, Baramunda and other areas. During the drive, posters from trees were also removed.
Taking advantage of poor enforcement, individuals and ad agents have made use of almost all free spaces, especially boundary walls of private households, public property and the side walls of flyovers, to paste various advertisement and promotional posters. Even trees and median poles were not spared.
Deputy Commissioner (Sanitation) Suvendu Kumar Sahoo warned that heavy penalty will be imposed on persons found pasting posters on boundary walls and trees. Fine up to Rs 5,000 will be collected from the violators.
On the other hand, Sahoo said the trial run of the night sweeping of streets has also been rolled out in the city. He said initially the drive has begun in Ward 40, where around 60 sanitation workers and labourers have been engaged for street sweeping during the night.
As the area has two major markets, Unit-I and Unit-II - where huge quantity of garbage is generated every day - BMC has decided to engage more workers and intensify night sweeping of commercial areas of the locality. The sweeping will continue till midnight.Officials said if implemented successfully the drive will be extended to other wards of the city.