Federation of Coimbatore Apartments has taken up with Municipal Administration Minister S.P. Velumani the civic body’s move to stop collecting waste at door step.
In its representation, submitted a couple of days ago, the Federation said the Corporation treating flats differently from houses to stop collecting waste was discriminatory.
The waste generated in flats was as domestic as those generated in houses. But the Corporation treated the flats differently by asking the apartments to manage their waste. It appeared as if the flats were commercial enterprises.
The Corporation had told them that they could process in-house the waste or engage a service provider. Many apartments had engaged such service providers and the engagement came with a cost. While the apartments were ready to segregate at source the waste, it was unfair of the Corporation to treat the apartments different, the Federation argued.
The Federation's petition has come close on the heels of the statement made by Justice (retd.) P. Jyothimani, Chairperson, State Level Monitoring Committee of NGT for Solid Waste Management in Tamil Nadu.
He had said that apartments could not cite the payment of property tax to argue that the Corporation must extend the waste management service. It would be in contravention of the Municipal Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016 wherein the Government of India had clearly said that apartments generating over 100 kg a day would be classified bulk waste generators to manage their waste.
Commenting on the development, Corporation Commissioner Sravan Kumar Jatavath said if the apartments did not want to engage service providers with a fee they could look at in-house solutions like installation of bio-digesters or biogas plants.
The service providers charged a fee from apartments to collect and transport the waste to the designated micro compost centres.
The Corporation would not get into the service providers’ fee issue and leave it to the market.
Mr. Jatavath also said the Corporation had started with those apartments that generated over 100kg a day. It would next move to those apartments that generated over 50 kg a day, as mentioned in the Rules.