Swachh Mysuru: MCC to place 100 public dustbins to curb littering, welcome tourists

Mysuru: Mysuru City Corporation (MCC) has decided to install public dustbins at 100 identified locations across the city to improve waste collection and ensure scientific disposal.

The initiative will cover busy markets, bus stops, commercial streets, parks and other public spaces.As part of the pilot phase, dustbins have been placed along Devaraj Urs Road and around Mysuru Palace premises. Civic authorities hope the initiative will help reduce littering and improve cleanliness standards in high-footfall areas before the project is expanded to additional locations across the city.The dustbins have been arranged under the CSR funds provided by SBI Foundation and Green Squad.

Currently, it has placed steel dustbins to collect dry and wet waste separately at every 100 metres distance along the 900-metres stretch of D Devaraj Urs Road and Mysuru Palace surroundings.Vendors doing business on D Devaraj Urs Road and Mysuru Palace surroundings have been instructed to ensure their customers use the dustbins installed by them on the streets, besides sensitisng public, tourists, citizens visiting their shops.

Also civic workers have been directed to clear the waste that accumulates in these dustbins three times in a day, depending on the amount of waste collected, and transport the waste to the dumping yard.A Green Squad has been entrusted the monitoring work in these places. They must ensure these places look clean, tidy, without any dumping of waste by shopkeepers, vendors and the public. MCC has also provided the squad with a brooming machine worth Rs 85 lakh to ensure the streets near Mysuru Palace, D Devaraj Urs are kept clean.As vendors doing business around Mysuru Palace surroundings and D Devaraj Urs Road discard waste (disposable plates, glasses, empty pan masala sachets, papers, plastic drinking water bottles) on streets, posing threat to city’s cleanliness despite warnings, penalties, MCC placed public litter bins directing the vendors and the public to use the bins instead of discarding waste on streets.Depending upon the success of this new initiative, MCC has decided to place similar kind of steel dustbins to collect dry and wet waste separately near prominent tourist spots like Mysuru zoo, Karanji Lake Park, St Philomena’s Cathedral, Chamundi Hills, among other spots.MCC Swachata nodal officer KS Mruthyunjaya said that MCC has decided to place public dustbins in prominent tourist spots, busy commercial, shopping streets to curb roadside littering, besides to ensure cleanliness of these places.MCC has also sensitized street vendors, D Devaraj Urs Road Tenants Association and other stakeholders in the city to cooperate with the civic body to keep the city clean and to promote tourism.The initiative also aims to promote cleanliness and encourage citizens to dispose of waste responsibly, he said.