The Vijayawada Municipal Corporation’s (VMC) initiative to arrange a conveyor belt on ghats to carry discarded clothes has eased the work burden on sanitation employees.
Every year, devotees, after relinquishing Bhavani deeksha, discard the deeksha clothes at the ghats. Some of them discard the clothes during the last couple of days of the Dasara festival, while others do it in December-January.
“Until last year, a separate team of outsourced employees was assigned the job of carrying huge buckets filled with discarded clothes,” Additional Engineer, VMC, Chandra Sekhar Reddy, said.
Every worker had to climb 15-20 steep stairs to reach the road. “Around 20-25 workers would make rounds from the ghat to the road and back, carrying a bucket full of wet clothes weighing around 25 kg,” Mr. Chandra Sekhar Reddy said.
The conveyor belt was introduced to make the job easier. The belt, 30 metres long, is laid between the ghat and the road. “Now, all that the worker must do is load the discarded clothes onto the belt near the ghat. Another worker on the road will be waiting to collect them and unload them into a truck.
The belt system, at a cost of ₹12 lakh, is being planned at a hilly area in the city too, said Prabhakar, Chief Engineer, VMC, .
