Rampur: No City buses, no waste disposal sites, no local hospitals to handle emergency cases, no proper schools with textbooks and more importantly no proper power supply.
Meet India’s worst city Rampur to live in which was recently made official after the Ministry of Housing and Urban affairs released the 111 cities list with Rampur finishing last in the Ease of Living Index 2018, TOI reported.
“We stand vindicated. We have always said it can’t get worse than this elsewhere in India,” Lakshya Saxena, a 25-year-old sales executive told TOI.
There are nearly 3.25 lakh residents living in Rampur city who throw about 165 tonnes, or 20 truckloads, of garbage daily which is not taken care since the city has no waste management facility.
“We were promised that Rampur municipality will generate electricity from waste. We have waste everywhere but no electricity,” said Syed Amir Mian, an advocate.
While Chief sanitation officer and food inspector TPS Verma blames staff shortage as Rampur’s insanitary conditions.
“According to a government order of 1991, there should be 28 sweepers for a population of 10,000. However, we have only 199 sweepers against the 355 permanent posts, and 170 against the 534 contractual posts. We have had to outsource the cleaning in 21 of 43 wards.”
The city’s district hospital has only 13 doctors against 27 sanctioned posts who see more than 4,000 out-patients every day, where cardiologist, neurologist skin specialist, ENT and other specialsed doctors are not appointed.
Speaking of the women’s ward, two patients often share a bed.
No government or private hospital in the city has an MRI machine. Education is a textbook case, too. At the Kasturba residential school in Loha, TOI found a student sweeping classrooms. “If sweepers are absent, students clean classrooms,” head teacher Yogita Rathore said. The adjoining primary school boasts of English-medium instruction but does not have electricity. It has two classrooms for 147 students, and no benches.
In these classes I and II, IV and V classes have been merged while Class III students sit in the verandah said a local adding that the schools are short of Textbooks to teach the children.
Now power supply has also become a issue in the city since there is no adequate power supply while power theft is rampant.
Sachin kumar Singh, executive engineer with the electricity department said the residents are resisting the underground cable to stop power theft which has amounted to Rs 35 crores of unpaid bills untill now.
“In the past six months, we have received over 10 cases of locals trying to stop underground cabling work.”
The department and police have so far lodged 478 FIRs and collected Rs 15.6 lakh in fines from raids since April 14.