Lack of awareness derails drive on segregated waste in Jaipur

Lack of awareness hit the new initiative of segregated waste collection introduced in eight wards of Jaipur on Monday.

Jaipur Municipal Corporation (JMC) officials claimed that the waste collected from eight wards of the city was segregated at the source. The door-to-door collection agency was instructed to collect wet and dry waste separately in different chambers, dumping however is not segregated, said officials.

Earlier, the JMC initiated the segregated collection of dry and wet garbage in the SFS Colony, Mansarovar, on a trial basis. On Monday, segregated collection was introduced in ward numbers 21, 24, 43, 40, 61, 87, 84 and 45.

Kavita Chaudhary, deputy commissioner (health), said one ward was selected from each zone for door-to-door garbage collection with monitoring by zone deputy commissioners. “We are primarily focusing on segregation and processing for the forthcoming Swachh Survekshan survey. These two are the major areas where we lost several points,” said Chaudhary.

While deputy commissioners in several areas monitored the segregated collection of garbage on the ground, awareness deficit was visible among residents on the types of wastes and segregation.

Officials from BVG India Limited, agency deployed for door-to-door collection of garbage, said segregated waste collection could not be done adequately since the people at the source did not use separate dustbins.

Dr Anand Sonawane, project director, BVG India Limited, said since most people still do not know the difference between wet and dry waste, creating awareness among the people will take at least a week’s time. “The waste collection done today (Monday) was same as we do daily, although we started an awareness drive to tell people how to keep separate dustbins for dry and wet waste so that we can collect segregated waste from them,” said Sonawane.

“Several garbage collection vehicles did not have the partition for dry and wet waste; in order to draw a separate chamber we need to put the plate in the middle of the carriage of a vehicle. We have installed plates for some vehicles. The installation in the vehicle for all these seven wards will be completed in a week’s time. We have initiated the process which will run full-fledged in a week’s time,” added Sonawane.

JMC officials said nearly 858 cleanliness workers will be deployed soon for an awareness campaign among residents. “We understand the lack of awareness among the residents and therefore we will soon carry out an orientation programme for 858 sanitation workers who will then be deployed in each zone to carry out the campaign. It is a capacity building activity which seems to be the most important part of any cleanliness campaign,” said Chaudhary.

The JMC has taken the segregated waste collection initiative eyeing the Swachh Survekshan Survey where the civic body dropped down five positions in 2019 in comparison to 2018. Jaipur city bagged 44th position in the Swachh Survekshan Survey-2019.

Even as the collection of wet waste is initiated, the dumping site is common for both. Presently nearly 1500 metric tonne waste is being disposed of daily for the city. Presently there are three dumping sites at Langadiyawas, Sewapura and Mathuradaspura. The wet waste is treated to make compost and the dry waste is treated to generate fuel. These two treatment sites treat up to 600-700 metric tonne waste each day, according to officials. The city still awaits setting up its waste-to-energy treatment plant.

First Published: May 21, 2019 13:12 IST