Kolkata Municipal Corporation mulls setting up bio-medical waste disposal plant
Kolkata: The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) is discussing plans to set up a biomedical waste disposal plant which will also open an avenue for the civic body to boost revenues.
On Wednesday, councillor Biswaroop Dey raised a question during the KMC monthly meeting as to whether the civic body has any provision for segregating biomedical waste from general waste. He also questioned the amount of biomedical waste collected by the civic body in a day and what is the monetary value of such waste. He asked if KMC at all has any method for recycling such waste.
Mayor, Firhad Hakim said as per KMC’s Solid Waste Management (SWM) Rules 2016, it has a process of segregating biodegradable waste from non-biodegradable.
He informed the House that medical waste does not get mixed with such waste. “The biomedical waste produced in several hospitals and nursing homes are disposed of separately. There’s a disposal plant at Belgachia where it gets dumped after collection by an agency appointed by the state’s Health Department. KMC does not have the required infrastructure to collect such wastes as of now,” he said.
Hakim added that such an agency also collects waste from KMC’s Health department and urban primary health centres for disposal in return for a fee. In a day, 193kg of medical waste is generated by the civic body’s health department, he mentioned.
The Mayor said: “In light of frequent complaints about disposal of medical wastes by private agencies, I had directed officials to explore if KMC can set up a plant for disposal of such wastes. The SWM department had drawn up a tender with the participation of several consulting agencies. The tender will be opened soon. We will see if we can borrow the required technology to set up the plant”.
He highlighted that in the event KMC succeeds in setting up such a plant, it can then collect the biomedical waste from the hospitals in the city in return for a certain amount of fee. “We will dispose of it scientifically and fees will bring revenue to coffers of the civic body,” he said.
