Is Comm St. BBMP’s blind spot?

BENGALURU: The Dispensary Road has become a dumping yard for the Commercial Street market. Shops and homes leave their trash in piles, with residents and business owners blaming the city corporation for not providing facilities for proper disposal. The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Pallike officials, on their part, say that they are willing to sort this mess if citizens cooperate.
Officials promise that soon CCTV cameras will be placed on black spots and offenders will be fined up to Rs 5,000.

Shops close early to keep away from the stench and hordes of mosquitoes that visit in the evening hours. A shopkeeper on Dispensary Road complains that no one from the BBMP has come to clear garbage for the past two days. "People come late in the night to toss their garbage here. There are no CCTV cameras to keep a check on them, and we are forced to shut shop early."

An electricity pole marks a dumping spot on Veerapillai Street, which runs parallel to Dispensary Road. Chandana, an operational executive, says she passes by it every day on her way to work. "Usually, you find a pile of garbage here near it, like a mountain. But today, they seemed to have cleared it."
A resident Chetna who lives near the same street, a few buildings away, says the entire area's garbage is dumped at that spot and the piles stinks up the neighbourhood. “No one is fined by the BBMP,” she says.
Chetna says that sometimes BBMP does not clear it for a week and to make things worse there is a choultry in the area. But why isn’t the waste segregated? “There are no proper facilities to do this and municipality has not conducted any awareness drive to encourage it,” she says.

A month ago, city’s waste-management expert NS Ramakanth attempted to launch a pilot in this market. “I wanted to make this a model of waste management in commerical areas,” he says, adding that it did not go anywhere with corporation officials and traders not agreeing on few points. Waste here can be managed without much trouble because of its composition.

Most of what is generated is dry, since it is a market area, he says. "There are only a few restaurants and so wet waste is very less and can be regulated," he says. Also a co-founder of Solid Waste Management Round Table, he suggests an agency can take up the issue. "We do not need much manpower as well. Two people in morning and evening would only be required to clear the garbage." He says that he has not given up  on the project and will return to end of this month.

‘Litterbugs will be fined Rs 500 to Rs 5,000’

Sarfaraz Khan, BBMP's Joint Commissioner (Health and Solid Waste Management), says that from the next week, pourakarmikas will visit the spot to clean even in the evenings. "I personally know that not more than one tonne of garbage is generated every day in Commercial Street,” he says.

There is no place to provide bins, he says. "If we have to keep bins, they should be placed at a distance of every 40 to 50 metres. We have bins at different spots across the city and we have noticed that people do not put garbage into the bin but around it. Citizens and shopkeepers should cooperate." He adds that an awareness drive was carried out and the trade association has agreed to cooperate.

He promises that this waste piles will disappear soon. "I have spoken to the officials. We will be getting roads swept early in the morning, collect the garbage later, after shops open and again in the evening,” he says, adding that CCTV cameras will be placed at black spots and people will be fined anything between Rs 500 and Rs 5,000.Meanwhile, ragpickers are making make a living out of this dump.

‘Sweep roads in the night’
A member of the Solid Waste Management Expert Committee, Ramakanth says that the only way to control the menace is to collect waste after the shops open. "I should convince the BBMP to do that and sweep the roads in the night. It is difficult to sweep in the morning because of the traffic." He adds that the traders, instead of blaming the BBMP, should cooperate and collect waste and hand them over to the pourakarmikas.