Expressing her displeasure over poor waste management during a surprise inspection at Sambhunath Pandit hospital, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday asked Mayor Sovan Chatterjee to start the cleaning-up operation immediately.
The waste management in state-run hospitals is done by the Public Works Department (PWD) and not by Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC). Chatterjee went to the hospital and started the cleaning and sweeping operations.
Banerjee made a surprise visit to Sambhunath, one of the major government hospitals located at Elgin Road in South Kolkata, on her way to attend a function at Uttirnno on Tuesday afternoon.
Banerjee found garbage piled up and spoke to the medical superintendent and hospital staff members. She also interacted with a few patients and immediately called up Sovan Chatterjee and asked him to remove the garbage.
"The KMC will remove garbage from hospitals if the responsibility is given to us," Chatterjee maintained.
The PWD is supposed to look after removal of garbage from the state-run hospitals. In some hospitals, the authorities have engaged private agencies for the job.
It may be mentioned that the KMC officials often visit the
state-run hospitals as part of the anti-larvae drive and if garbage is found, they ask the hospital authorities to remove it.
However, the civic authorities remove garbage from state-run hospital compounds on the request of the authorities and against a certain payment of fees.
A senior civic official said the private agencies entrusted with removal of garbage often do not carry out the work properly and piling up of garbage could be avoided if the hospital authorities take up the matter with the agencies promptly.
The KMC will soon start anti-larvae drive in state-run hospitals, Central government and state government establishments.
Teams comprising senior officials will visit the institutions and pull up the errant ones.
The officials said despite requests many establishments do not maintain their campuses properly which in the long run lead them to become mosquito breeding grounds.