At least 200 compactors set up to end city's garbage woes

KOLKATA: Gone are the days when a person traveling along the streets of Kolkata had to cover his nose as foul smell emanated from garbage dumped in open vats. Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has been able to fulfill its promise of an open vat-free Kolkata by setting up compactor stations and using movable compactors.

"We had claimed in 2015 that there will be no open vats in the city. We have set up 119 stationary compactors and 95 movable compactors. We also have battery operated tipper trucks," Debabrata Majumdar, outgoing member mayor-in-council of Solid Waste Management, who also happens to be an MLA from Jadavpur Assembly constituency, said.

The first compactor station in Kolkata was set up on a trial basis at Kalighat in 2012. The waste collection in the city is done thrice and the waste is dumped in compactors. More than 11,500 employees are associated with this herculean task of waste collection. The total expenditure for developing this infrastructure has been over Rs 44 crore. About 4,500 metric tons of solid waste is generated daily in the KMC jurisdictional area.

The KMC uses more than 710 battery operated vehicles for the purpose of collection of waste from households to the compactor stations.

"A compactor is a machine or mechanism, which exerts pressure and removes the watery elements. The fluids are channelised into the drainage system. So, the size of the material and its weight gets reduced. Moreover, there is no emission of any smell from the compactors," a senior official of the SWM department said. The official said some open spaces had been deliberately left at certain places for dumping of tree branches or trunks after trimming or after removing slush from the drain. "However, we are making plans on how to remove them from such places on a war footing or utilizing them for some profitable purpose," the official added.

He regretted the fact that still there are some people, who have the tendency to dump garbage at places where an open vat existed earlier. "At a number of such places, we have created gardens with the help of the Parks and Gardens department and in some other spots we are keeping our battery operated trippers stationed to prevent people from dumping waste there," he maintained.