I FEEL nauseated whenever I pass through a main street or branch street with trash boxes overflowing with open plastic bags and from where odor is spreading around. This is quite different from the situation in the United States and other Western countries. There, one would not smell bad when walking through a street having trash bins on the sides. Here even when one is driving a car he is disgusted with the odor penetrating into the nose through car windows. In my opinion, we — the citizens, expatriates and the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs — have to jointly shoulder the responsibility for this lingering problem. We should embark on a proper awareness campaign letting people know to deposit the closed plastic bags of trash inside the box. As for most domestic workers, they also don't have such awareness. In most cases, people throw open plastic bags in the boxes from a little distance and this sometimes would fall on the street. The litter thus scatters on the road and emits harmful odor in the entire neighborhood. If the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs launches an intensive media campaign aimed at making people aware of the proper way of disposing trash, and warning about slapping fine on those who fail to implement it, then our streets would be improved very much with regard to hygiene and cleanliness. Before taking such a step, the ministry has to modernize the trash bins. We can see the type of open trash boxes that we use here only in a very few poor countries in the world. Similarly, it is important that there could be separate closed trash bins for each household as we see in most of the advanced countries. Here, I propose that two separate trash bins could be installed in front of each house. One box is for dumping normal garbage while the second one for waste papers and plastic bottles that can be recycled. This eventually helps in creating jobs for a large number of youths in the recycling industry. I draw attention to another important fact that in the United States and the European countries, vehicles normally collect and dispose off garbage once or two times in a week. This does not create any hygiene problem or air pollution or foul smell from the trash boxes in those countries. Imagine, what would be the situation in our country if street cleaners stay away from work for a few days! The reason is that people in the West do have proper hygiene conscience. They always keep trash bags and boxes closed thus not creating either any pollution or nuisance to those living in the neighborhood. There, everybody knows what would happen to him in case of violating hygiene regulations. First they have to encounter an abuse from the neighbors and then they have to face penal actions. On the contrary, we have nothing to worry. Here, garbage collection trucks roam about our streets, spreading the odor of trashes all around and it has become a routine daily business. People are not bothering about litter being scattered on streets outside the trash boxes. Here, the issue is two-pronged. First, the public are not given proper awareness about the best method of dispensing trashes. Secondly, the trash boxes are not ideal as they are open and people will throw litter outside it on the streets. The municipal authorities are negligent in taking stringent punitive measures against violators of public hygiene regulations.
