Festival garbage on road but for how long?

Bengaluru: The three-day Deepavali celebrations may have ended in the city, but for the BBMP to get back on its knees and clear the garbage dumped on streets, it will take another four days. Despite claiming that the civic body had found alternative places on the outskirts to transport festival garbage, many areas in the city have turned into landfill replicas. Ulsoor, Kadirenahalli, Basaveshwara Nagar, Jayanagar, Chamarajpet and Malleswaram are some of the worst affected areas.

Festival garbage laced with sewage and rain water killed the festival spirit in most of the areas. Lakshman.P, a resident of Ulsoor, rued that footpaths had become dustbins in his locality. “We have no space to walk on road. It’s either garbage heaps one side or water puddles on the other. Even going out for a walk seems a challenging task,” he complained.

The BBMP, however, maintained that it did not have designated places to dump festival garbage. When asked why the civic agency was not prepared to handle festival garbage, BBMP Commissioner Kumar Naik said, “Where do you send the garbage? We have to send only segregated, wet waste to farmers as promised and can’t increase the flow inordinately. First there was Dasara festival, later protests broke out in Doddaballapura landfill and now Deepavali is being celebrated. All the major events followed each other too fast and we did not have time to react.”

Mr Naik added that despite increasing trucks and staff to dispose of festival garbage, there was at least four days’ garbage lying on the streets.

“As long as landfills exist, there will be some garbage-related problem persisting. For nearly five days there were protests in Doddaballapur and we could not dump garbage in the landfill. Hence, that garbage is lying on the streets. Also, when the quantum of garbage sent to Kannahalli and Seegehalli plants increased, the locals protested. We had to close the plant for a short duration. Now, the plants are open and garbage is being processed,” he maintained.

Though urban experts have suggested that key solution to garbage menace lies in segregation of garbage at source, the civic body has not penalised anyone in this regard or enforced the government order. Commenting about this, Mr Naik stressed that this time, for real the BBMP was implementing segregation at source.

“We can solve 1/4th of city’s garbage issues, if Kannahalli plant, which has 500 tonne processing capacity, becomes fully operational. But that can be achieved only if garbage is segregated. There were complaints that pourakarmikas were mixing segregated garbage. Now, we are changing tender rules for solid waste management and are ensuring that wet and dry wastes are carried separately to the processing plants,” he said.

The continuous downpour in the last four days has also led to fear of increase in epidemics. The rotting garbage, stagnated water, and flow of sewage into homes have worried residents of low-lying areas. When asked Mr Naik why the BBMP was not spraying chemicals to the garbage lying on streets, he said, “Our immediate focus is to take garbage off streets. We are sure in the next four days situation will be under control.”