Mumbai: Terming Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) waste disposal and segregation efforts “ineffective”, city corporators have proposed that the civic body take lessons from neighbouring Indore’s Solid Waste Management (SWM) model. The debate over Mumbai’s solid waste management implementation started after eight corporators visited Indore Municipal Corporation in December last year.
These eight corporators and others in the civic standing committee last week slammed the civic body for failing to monitor their waste collection vehicles and alleged that both dry and wet waste were mixed in the vehicles.
Four-term corporator from Ward 54 in Andheri (W) Rajul Patel said Mumbai was a mega city and it should have its own successful solid waste management model. “The vehicles that carry and transport waste to disposal centres mix dry and wet waste. When citizens complain, the problems in that area are temporarily resolved. If the civic administration is not serious about the issue, then why should citizens be?” Patel said.
In order to resolve the issue of solid waste management and to implement the Swachh Bharat drive effectively, the BMC had appointed a consultant, M/s E&Y as the Project Implementation Unit (PIU) last November and will be shelling out Rs 50 lakh for the purpose.
Corporators, however, told the civic administration, instead of appointing consultants, it should consult them, the corporators for on-the-ground feedback.
Sanjay Ghadi, Shiv Sena corporator from Dahisar (East) Ward 5 said, “Even two years after rolling out its new solid waste management model, BMC, one of the richest civic bodies in India is still struggling with implementation. Indore, despite being a small city, has not only managed to achieve it but has become a role model for other cities. BMC needs to take lessons from Indore.”
“Indore has definitely resolved over 90 per cent of its solid waste challenge. It has been named as the cleanest city twice and its efforts to achieve the feat should be lauded. We have street sweepers one time a day, but Indore has sweepers during the night too,” said Shiv Sena’s Sindhu Masurkar, corporator of Ward 203 (Parel).
Ghadi and Masurkar were part of the delegation that visited Indore municipal corporation to study their solid waste management model.
Indore’s ‘intelligent’ solid waste management
*The Indore Municipal Corporation also ensured that its own officials adopted the programme, suspending those who were not doing their job in supervising garbage collection while rewarding those who worked well.
*For waste collection to be successful, planners/SWM officials tried to study and understand residents' behaviour. For instance: In a locality, where people do not wake up before 10 or 11am, the vans will only go to these areas only in the afternoon and ensure not a single household is missed.
*Indore has cleaning and waste-collecting vehicles with real-time tracking devices installed and it ensures that the driver is taking the waste-collecting vehicle on the specified route and at a specific time. If any of the drivers are not doing the work as assigned and decide to skip a lane, then the device instantly notifies the authorities. All the vehicles are fitted with a ‘Push to Talk’ feature, along with a ‘tracking tag’ which allows the authorities to track the location of every vehicle.
