A mild yet persistent stench hung in the air over Valmiki Ambedkar Awas Yojana (Vambay) colony in Vijayawada. However, the stench, coming from a nearby garbage transfer station, is not as strong as it used to be three years ago, says Devi Kumari, a resident. “It still bothers us, but it is better than what it was. We are getting used to it,” she says.
Some apartments in the rehabilitated colony, home to construction workers, rickshaw pullers, domestic workers, autorickshaw drivers and other day labourers, were constructed in the 1960s, says CPI(M) senior leader Ch. Babu Rao. Today, the colony has over a lakh residents.
And it is close to this colony that a proposal to establish a slaughterhouse on Disney Land site at Singh Nagar came up during a recent council meeting of the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC).
Though VMC officials maintained that the proposal is on ‘demand-and-requirement’ basis and that it is yet to be approved by the government, residents and CPI(M) cadre organised protests in the city recently.
“Heaps of garbage were left for years here. It was after a 20-year-long fight that we got the officials to act on the issue in 2020. Nowadays, the garbage dumped here is cleared immediately. But, just as we began to breathe some fresh air, the officials are now talking about a slaughterhouse on 10 acres of the Disney Land park site,” says Ms. Devi Kumari.
The park, spread over 57 acres, was closed three years ago. Though an old couple guards the park, people go there in the evenings to consume alcohol, residents say.
“People living in the colony have always been given short shrift by the corporation. It was the landfill issue before, and now it is the slaughterhouse,” says president of Taxpayers’ Association V. Sambi Reddy.
“People living in the colony have always been given short shrift by the corporation. It was the landfill issue before, and now it is the slaughterhouse”V. Sambi ReddyPresident of Taxpayers’ Association
“The city currently does not have a public ground as Swarajya Maidan is now being turned into the Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Memorial Park. We demand that the park space in Singh Nagar be used as a public ground,” he adds.
“We have voiced our concerns to the officials. It is sad that we have to be fighting for every right,” says Durga Rao, another resident who also lives nearby.
“As per VMC officials, what we have in Singh Nagar is a garbage transfer station, but after the waste is segregated, some of it is left there to rot. Just because the people living here are poor, don’t they have rights?” asks Mr. Babu Rao.
He said it is sad to see that slaughterhouses and landfills come amidst habitations and people live on the outskirts, when it should be the other way around.
