Farmers Movement Archive

Farmers start cleaning up agitation site at Singhu border after residents complain

After over a fortnight of garbage piling up at the protest site at the Singhu border, farmers started cleaning the roads after residents complained about the mounting litter heaps.Since Tuesday, they have been collecting truckloads of garbage from the protest venue, while urging protesters to ensure that local residents do not remember them “for the wrong reasons”.Those carrying out the sanitation drive said they started it after complaints from several residents about the mess that was being left on the roads and adjacent neighbourhoods.“When we began the cleaning exercise on Tuesday; we brought 500 garbage bags and distributing them to farmers but they were not enough. “On Thursday, we have brought another 1,000 garbage bags,” said Jugraj Singh Jaggi, who belongs to Mundh village in Jalandhar, and heads a group of about 25 people under the banner of Fikr-e-Hond, an organisation that works for farmer welfare in Punjab. These men -- kitted out in blue half jackets and carrying broomsticks, dustpans and extra-large dustbin covers -- begin the cleaning exercise daily at 10am and continue till 5pm.“We realised that we were only organising langars (community kitchens) and doing nothing about the waste. We had made a lot of mess,” said Jaggi’s friend, Snehdeep Kamboj. Rajesh, a municipality sanitation worker from Sonepat, said he was among 20 workers deployed by the government soon after the protests began. “Now only 13 of us are working here. The work is a lot and we are too few hands to clean up everything,” said Rajesh. The drains here have been heavily clogged with decaying food, disposable plates, plastic glasses and all sorts of garbage. The empty plots have been used extensively for defecation and the streets are littered with waste. Sanitation work by civic agencies on the Delhi side is limited to areas not occupied by farmers. Jaggi’s group said they have been collecting at least four truckloads of garbage every day since Tuesday. “We take the garbage to a dump yard, 10km away. Cleaning the place will take a lot of effort and time, but we intend to sanitise the place and leave it better than when we arrived here,” said Kamboj. Jitender Singh, who belongs to Patiala town and calls himself a sewadar, said he was among another group of 15 farmers cleaning the streets from morning to evening. “The electronic media was reporting about the sanitation mess. No one should face problems because of us. So, we are apologising to the public and cleaning up,” said Jitender.He said he and his men have been loading the waste into trolleys and dumping them on empty plots away from the site. “Those empty plots already are filled with waste,” said Jitender whose group is associated with a gurdwara in Ludhiana. Then, there are individual farmers who have joined hands and divided the protest site into zones to ensure no area is left dirty. “We have formed groups of 10 each and assigned a few hundred metres of road to each group to keep clean,” said Palwinder Singh, a farmer from Badwa village in Ropar district, while carrying a large number of brooms that had been donated by a Delhi resident. Some groups are limiting themselves to distributing garbage covers. Dileep Singh of Khalsa Aid, a charitable organisation that is into “dry langar” and provides services such as free foot massages, sanitary napkins and undergarments, among others, said they have been disturbing garbage bins for quite some time now.Local residents, however, were unimpressed by all this and said the sanitation efforts were yet to make a difference to the area. “The farmers may have been cleaning the area where they are camping. But will they clean the adjacent empty plots which have been turned into open toilets for the past 20 days? The neighbourhood around here is stinking,” said Sanjay Sahni, a local trader.

Hindustan Times

18-12-2020

Delhi