SAMBALPUR: People of Sambalpur will now have to pay a user fee for organising social functions and feasts at religious places in the city. The Sambalpur Municipal Corporation (SMC) has decided to collect Rs 750 towards cleaning of these places after the functions.
SMC Deputy Commissioner Subhankar Mohanty said marriages, thread ceremonies and other social functions are organised mostly in temples and other religious places in the city.
A huge quantity of waste is generated from such events and it is not disposed off in a proper manner. The user fee will be used by SMC to lift waste and clean the venues after the events are over. The civic body’s garbage lifting vehicle will go to religious institutions where social functions are organised and collect the waste for proper disposal.
Those willing to host social functions will have to first pay the user fee and collect a receipt from SMC before organising the event. “We have already issued letters to the management committees of religious institutions to ask people to produce the receipt before allowing them to organise the functions,” Mohanty said.
According to official reports, there are more than 50 religious institutions in the city where social functions are organised regularly. Earlier, the SMC had made it mandatory for the private Kalyan mandap to pay a user fee of Rs 1,500 to organise social functions.
“We have also recently issued a letter to all the private Kalyan Mandaps, to create plate banks at their respective establishments and use reusable plates and glasses instead of the disposable ones so that less quantity of waste would be generated from the Kalyan Mandap after the social functions, said Mohanty.
The move is aimed at stopping people from carelessly disposing off used plates. Currently, as people are hosting feasts in the wake of the holy month of Shravan, a great amount of waste is generated almost every alternative day. Of late, SMC has become very active in terms of garbage collection. New garbage collection vans have been deployed for collecting waste from commercial establishments and religious institutions.