Daijiworld Media Network - Mangaluru (SP)

Mangaluru, Jun 19: The city corporation here, which has repeatedly been told by the green tribunal and the high court to strictly manage garbage scientifically, has issued an order making it mandatory to sort out dry and wet waste before disposing them off. This order has created a lot of problems for the gram panchayats located adjacent to the Mangaluru City Corporation (MCC) limits.

The gram panchayats located immediately outside the corporation limits depend on Pachanady dumping yard for the disposal of the garbage generated by them. Till now they used to bring garbage in a truck and dump it here, without bothering to sort them out. Within the city too, even though there has been instructions for a long time to sort the garbage, many were not following the instructions. Therefore, the gram panchayats continued with their earlier practice. But now that sorting has been made compulsory, mixed waste is not accepted at Pachanady. Therefore the gram panchayats have to sort the garbage before bringing it here.

 
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As villagers did not respond to the repeated requests to sort the waste, some gram panchayats have stopped house to house collection of garbage. They plan to convince the people again of the need to sort the waste. It has been planned to call for tenders to issue red and green colour buckets to make it easier to sort the garbage. As the garbage is now not being collected, waste packed in plastic sachets gets rotten within the compounds of many houses. People increasingly are throwing their garbage by the roadside, having been unable to keep the stinking waste inside their houses.

In addition to six to seven gram panchayats, garbage from even Ullal city municipality and Bantwal town municipality comes to Pachanady dumping yard. Garbage from Kotekar town panchayat also is dumped here. Even though there is opposition to this, this practice has been followed form the last many years. The city mayor says that whatever decision is taken by the city corporation applies to all these bodies. The district administration's order that every local body should have its own waste disposal unit has not yet been fully followed.

However, the collection of garbage every day from the houses where Covid-infected people live has not been affected. They are provided with yellow-black bags and everyday biomedical waste is collected. As they are disposed of though primary health centres, no problem has been created. But there are allegations that the waste is not being disposed of from the primary health centres on a daily basis.

Adyar gram panchayat development officer, Krishna Naik, confesses that the new order to sort out garbage has created problems. He says that the villagers have been informed, and they will be given buckets to segregate wet and dry wastes. City mayor Premananda Shetty, said that waste is accepted at Pachanady only if it is sorted. He said that through the department of environment, garbage handling staff at Pachanady have been instructed to allow disposal of waste only if the same is properly sorted.