Odisha government readies procedure for waste management

BHUBANESWAR: The State Government has issued a Standard Operating Procedure on decentralised solid waste management and asked all urban local bodies (ULBs) to engage Swachh Sathis in their respective Wards.

Swachh Sathis will act as change agents to bring about collective behavioural changes at the household level for door-to-door collection of segregated waste and ensure decentralised composting of wet waste and collection of dry waste.  

Each of them will get an honorarium of Rs 4,000 for 600 households per month. ULBs will organise orientation sessions for Swachh Sathis to make them aware of different components of solid waste management.

The ULBs have been asked to prepare an action plan indicating vehicle number, time of waste collection, delivery of wet waste at micro composting centres, time and location of unloading saleable and non-saleable dry waste, supervision of mechanism to ensure zero discharge to the landfill sites.

“The Swachh Sathis will also engage supervisors selected from local women self help groups. They will be paid `8,000 per month for 2,400 households. An OSD (sanitation) will also be designated among the existing ULB staff to oversee the whole process and logistics,” said an official of Housing and Urban Development department.  

The civic bodies have also been provided with technical details for constructing Micro composting centres (MCC) and on-site composting centres (OCC) besides segregating and processing the waste.

Basing on the land available, an MCC/OCC with 14 tubs and processing capacity of five tonne waste per day can be built in an area of 600 sq metre while a minimum 1.5-tonne capacity centre can be developed on an area of 200 sq metre. It can process waste from 2,220 households.

The ULBs have been directed to develop a suitable mechanism in consultation with district Collectors and other stakeholders for timely and proper selling of the compost generated from these centres.