In north & east Delhi, segregating garbage at source only on paper

New Delhi: Despite annual promises of fixing the city's ever-growing garbage woes, the North and East MCDs have yet again failed to keep up with their latest deadline to ensure that solid waste is segregated at source — making it a policy that remains just on paper.

The civic bodies in North and East Delhi had set a November 1, 2021 deadline to ensure that only segregated waste is collected at source to reduce the burden on the ever-growing mammoth landfills such as the ones in Okhla and Bhalswa but residents in areas like Chandni Chowk and Karol Bagh have complained about the lack of implementation and only talk from the civic agencies.

Councillors in the East MCD have constantly complained that even though houses in their areas have made efforts to segregate their waste, the garbage collectors often mix them, wasting their efforts to segregate it at source.

On the other hand, garbage collectors in North MCD have complained that they are already burdened with a lot of work which along with delays in their salaries cause them to not segregate. Additionally, they have said that they are not always provided with the necessary equipment or enough instructions on how exactly to segregate the solid waste efficiently.

Residents of areas like Chandni Chowk, Model Town, Karol Bagh, Gandhi Nagar and more explained that no segregation happens in their localities. A resident of Karol Bagh; Vishakha Aggarwal, 32 said, "All we see is awareness campaigns and no actual effort to clean the area."

RWA officials in various localities have echoed her remarks, saying that all MCDs do is talk about the issue and spend money on advertisements but there is no segregation at source despite the deadline being almost a month back.

In this year's Swachh Sukeveshan rankings, the three MCDs' performances had been lackluster. While South MCD managed to rank 31 out of 48, East and North came at 40 and 45 respectively. And none of them were able to make progress in the race for star ranking in the garbage-free city status. South MCD had applied for one-star ranking and East MCD had applied for three-star ranking, both were denied.

Despite strong efforts, around 800 dhalaaos (open garbage dumps) are still functioning in South Delhi with the SDMC having shut down 169 of them in the last few years by introducing Fixed Compactor Transfer Stations (FCTS), a garbage compressing system that transfers collected garbage to sanitary landfill sites.

South MCD has a total of 96 FCTS. Similarly, East MCD has closed 119 dhaalos, the remaining 200 (approximately) are being managed and will be closing in the upcoming years, officials claimed, adding that they had already installed 31 FCTS and 7-8 more will be placed in the next 15-20 days. North MCD has also managed to close 246 dhaalos and place 72 FCTS in areas under its jurisdiction. It is aiming to place 20 more FCTS in the upcoming months.

Even after all these efforts, the three municipal corporations have continuously failed to implement strong action in terms of waste management. East MCD commissioner Vikas Anand, had explained that the civic body is fighting hard to tackle the issue and several new initiatives are being taken constantly.