Beautifying Bengaluru: Government mulls waste collection twice a day

BENGALURU: Taking forward the beautification drive, the state government is contemplating making it mandatory for the

Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike

(BBMP) to undertake door-to-door collection of household waste twice in a day.

At present, household waste is collected in the city once in a day, usually in the morning. But with people illegally dumping garbage by the roadside during night by taking advantage of darkness, the government has proposed

waste collection

twice a day.

The issue came to the fore during by the inter-department coordination meeting presided by chief secretary TM Vijat Bhaskar on Tuesday evening, sources said. “The chief secretary said the second round of waste collection should have happened before the compactor (truck) leaves for the garbage processing plants,” they added This, in other words, would mean that the auto-tipper would come to houses for collecting waste in the evenings too.

Bhaskar said the junior health inspectors should take attendance of the auto-tippers at mustering points to ensure compliance. The auto-tippers should be covered with tarpaulin before garbage is transferred to the contractor. This apart, compactors should go around the city and clear the black spots. Bhaskar has suggested that clearance of black spots should be linked to the payments to be made to the contractor.

Though the decision to undertake waste collection twice a day is all set to bring cheers to the residents, the move is likely to put more pressure on the exchequer as the garbage-clearance bill will only increase. The BBMP is currently paying Rs 600 crore per annum towards garbage clearance. BBMP garbage contractor Balasubramanya welcomed the state government’s move and said: “The aim is to ensure that there is no garbage strewn on the roads. This can be achieved if we start collecting waste twice a day.”

He said tenders should be called at the earliest as the BBMP continues to pay garbage clearance bills by taking exemption under Section 4G of the Karnataka Transparency in Public Procurement Act.

CLEAN MOVE

*If the plan is implemented, auto-tippers will come to houses for collecting waste in the evenings too

* Junior health inspectors should take attendance of auto-tippers at mustering points to ensure compliance

*Auto-tippers should be covered with tarpaulin before garbage is transferred to the contractor

*The garbage-clearance bill set to increase. The BBMP is currently paying Rs 600 crore annually towards garbage clearance
BBMP to rope in Ugly Indians

Under pressure from the high court to beautify Bengaluru, the BBMP has decided to get rid of black spots by roping in Ugly Indians, a volunteer-based anonymous city beautification initiative. BBMP special commissioner (solid waste management) D Randeep has directed the junior health inspectors to coordinate with Ugly Indians and commence beautification work on black spots across the city. The jurisdictional civic officials have been authorized to spend Rs 4,000 on beautifying a black spot: While Rs 1,000 will be used for buying spot-fixing tools and Rs 3,000 will used for painting the black spots. The Palike plans to get rid of over 900 black spots during the upcoming Rangoli Habba where pourakarmikas and residents will beautify black spots by drawing rangolis. There are around 1,600 black spots across the city.