Soon, KMC to reward boroughs for efficient solid waste management

Kolkata: Now get rewarded for keeping your borough spick and span. The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) will soon start awarding boroughs for efficiently handling solid waste management.

"The decision has been taken to encourage the common people to maintain cleanliness in their respective areas. The Solid Waste Management department (SWM) of the civic body has already got the nod of the Mayor in Councils' to go forward with this. A fund of Rs 6 lakh has been earmarked for the competition," a senior official of SWM

department said.

It may be mentioned that there are presently 144 wards under KMC and as many as 16 boroughs.

The borough wise prize will be of three categories- first prize will be Rs 3 lakh, second prize will be Rs 2 lakh and the third is Rs 1 lakh. The awards will be on the basis of performance of the boroughs for a specific period of time - six months or one year.

Cleanliness of garbage containers, vats, bins etc, door to door collection of garbage, use of compactor stations, battery operated vehicles,

hydraulic dumpers, tricycle vans, community awareness, sweeping of roads on a regular basis, special efforts for cleanliness and beautification and cleanliness of

hospitals that are managed by the civic body are the various parameters that will be looked into for giving the prizes.

"In some of the wards, there are tourist places like shrines, heritage buildings etc.

Keeping these places neat and clean will also come under the purview of the competition," the official added.

It has been decided that the boroughs will be first asked to furnish a list of the activities pertaining to solid waste management that they have undertaken.

Following this a borough wise team from the SWM department of the KMC will visit their respective boroughs and grade the work.

It may be mentioned that solid waste management in the city has witnessed a sea change in the last seven years.

The KMC has progressed by leaps and bounds to replace open

vats in the city and have set up compactor stations and introduced movable compactor stations.

There are only a handful of vats that exist and the civic body is hopeful of replacing such vats by

the end of 2019.

The civic body is progressing slowly but steadily when it comes to implementation of the SWM Rules 2016 - that has categorised solid waste into six broad categories - Industrial hazardous waste,

Healthcare or biomedical waste, Solid waste that involves wastes from houses, schools and offices, Plastic waste, Electronic or e waste and Construction or

Demolition waste.

In seven wards of the city: 33, 47, 64, 103, 110, 115 and 135, the KMC has employed private agencies who collect inorganic and organic wastes in separate buckets.

"Funds is a major constraint for us when it comes to put in such infrastructure in all our wards," a SWM official said.