Mechanised sweeping in Mohali: Residents asked not to park vehicles on footpaths at night

Less than two months after mechanised sweeping began in Mohali, the machine operators are reportedly finding it difficult to clean the B-roads as vehicles are parked on the footpaths near the houses at night.

The contractor hired by the municipal corporation claims that there are operational difficulties in ensuring proper cleaning on B-roads.

Mayor Amarjit Singh Sidhu has urged the residents alongside the B-roads not to park their vehicles on footpaths at night. Several councillors argued that ‘such excuses’ do not absolve the Mayor of his job of ensuring cleanliness in the city.

Mohali road decongestion

To make Mohali roads congestion free and safe in the wake of growing urbanisation, the Secretary, Housing and Urban Development, Rahul Tewari has held a meeting with officials.

DC Aashika Jain, Gmada chief administrator Moonish Kumar, MC Commissioner T Benith, Mohali SSP Deepak Pareek, NHAI project director and State Road Safety Adviser Navdeep Aseeja attended the meeting.

Emphasising the need to plan out short and long-term solutions to overcome future challenges on congestion of traffic on roads, he said all departments must work in tandem with the DC to flag the issues with the state government, UT and Panchkula administrations.

He said the related proposals should be submitted to the state where land acquisition was required, besides roping in the Greater Mohali Area Development Authority (Gmada) for short-term solutions.

“Are the A-roads being cleaned properly? What about those B-roads where no vehicles are parked. Are they being cleaned regularly? The road near Gurdwara Sacha Dhan and Community Centre, Phase-3B1 road, Phase 3B2 road near Hanuman temple, road opposite Rose Garden, Phase-7 road and scooter market road have no vehicles parked, but still there are piles of garbage lying around. The reality is that the Mayor, contractor and a few sanitary inspectors do not have the will to keep the city clean,” said Manjit Sethi, Ward No. 2 councillor.

Mohali MLA Kulwant Singh opined that parking was a big issue here. “It can be done in the daytime as vehicles are mostly not there,” he said. Ward No. 37 councillor Sukhdev Patwari asked the Mayor not to make such statements for city residents and rather try implementing it in his own ward or at least Sector 70. “He should take sanitary inspectors along and ask his area residents to remove their vehicles from footpath at night. If it can be implemented there, surely it can be implemented in the city as well,” he said.

Another councillor asked the Mayor to tell the residents “where to park their vehicles at night. Is it now that he has realised that it would be a problem”. Ward No. 7 councillor Baljit Kaur said, “Both parking of vehicles and sweeping of road is necessary. It would be great if the sweeping of B roads is done during day time.”

Deputy Mayor Kuljit Singh Bedi said, “If proper sweeping is not possible at night, it should be done during the day. Manual sweeping of those stretches by the contractor can also be discussed. I had raised this issue in the House meeting and many councillors had agreed to it.”