GUWAHATI: The newly appointed Commissioner of the Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC) Devashish Sharma has been undergoing midnight missions across the city. Sharma, along with his team of senior officials, takes rounds in the city to check on the work done by the ground-level GMC workers.
On Monday, May 31, at about 11:30 PM, the G Plus team interacted with the GMC officials and the commissioner. As per the GMC commissioner, the night missions are an attempt to reduce the gap between the top officers and ground-level workers in a bid to imbibe in them a spirit for their work.
The workers as well the GMC are fully engrossed in the desilting process ever since the new GMC commissioner has taken over. Assam witnesses annual floods every year in the monsoon and as for Guwahati, the city mostly witnesses flash floods. One of the primary methods to reduce flash floods is through the process of desilting, which is the removal of fine silt and sediment that has collected in a river in order to restore its natural capacity, without widening or deepening the river.
Currently, similar measures have been undertaken across the city from the VIP Road to Ulubari to Maligaon. However, the preparations although done in full spirit don't guarantee that flash floods will not occur in the city. Among other reasons, this year, the desilting procedure was postponed amid the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) for the Assam Assembly Elections and that has stalled the work.
"Yes, the work has been delayed due to that but the initiatives we are doing are not to solve everything this year. This will be a process for years and cannot be solved within a year. What I am trying to do is take forward the work done by the previous senior officials of the department, who too have worked wonderfully," Sharma.
Devashish Sharma brings with him his reputation from the Assam Bhawan in Mumbai where he is the Joint Resident Commissioner and Founder Chairman and Trustee Deepsikha Foundation. Sharma is known for transforming the Assam Bhawan into a safe haven for cancer patients single-handedly. As such, he carries with him an era of approachability from his Mumbai stint. On the issue of transforming the similar approachability in the GMC, he highlighted the need for approachability in civil services and denied the claim that government offices are not approachable in Assam.
However, to foster better approachability, senior officials of the GMC have proposed to be even more proactive on social media. G Plus spoke to Navdeep Changmai, GMC Collector who is overseeing the official social media handles to spread information regarding the helpline.
The Commissioner has also visited the flooded bye-lanes of the city and the water tanks running under the GMC. Amid the zeal and efforts of the re-energized GMC, there are certain existential issues that loom in the department. Among them are sanitization issues such as the lack of public toilets for women in markets, the development of GMC markets, and streetlights malfunctioning, which have been highlighted by G Plus over the years.
G Plus spoke to Chief Engineer Devajit Das who stated all the core areas have been highlighted in the meeting including the market situation. "Currently we have a top to bottom approach with the Guwahati Development Department (GDD) Minister Ashok Singhal to the Commissioner and all officials involved. We have taken up all the issues that remain to be addressed over time and each one will be addressed," Das told G Plus.
Few concerns continue to remain and one of those is waste segregation as the process of desilting is only a temporary measure as the drains again fill with plastic and trash. The GMC officials have clarified that due diligence has been made to better waste segregation and recycling.
Amid the honest efforts of the ground-level workers and the renewed enthusiasm of the GMC, the coming days will be crucial to determine how well the policies have been implemented for the issues that have been addressed by the department.