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| Experts pick holes in 'action plan' on solid waste mgmt | | |
Early Times Report
SRINAGAR, June 14: As Housing and Urban Development Department has submitted a detailed action plan on Municipal Solid Waste Management (SWM) to J&K High Court very recently, the petitioner organization which had filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) before High Court last year on scientific solid waste management in J&K along with research scholars allege that the action plan has many flaws which need to be rectified soon.
Details available with Early Times reveal that the government submitted a detailed action plan on SWM before the High Court in response to a PIL titled Environmental Policy Group (EPG) v/s Union of India, State of J&K and others. The EPG and many experts on solid waste management allege that the cluster model adopted by government has already been rejected by all the bidders and from last 3 years not even a single bidder has shown interest to go ahead with management of solid waste by clubbing three of more towns into one cluster.
"Inspite of rejecting the said model, government is still adamant to adopt the same. Under the cluster model, municipal solid waste from each town is to be brought to a centralized location for treatment. This idea that was conceptualized by the government around three years back has already failed to see its implementation on ground," said Syed Nasarullah, senior member of the EPG.
"Instead of adopting a decentralized model, government has once again made the same failed model part of its Action Plan. It is shocking that government has submitted same model before J&K High Court which already stands rejected by the implementing agencies. In-fact we had deliberated in detail on this before Chief Secretary last year in December on the direction of Chief Justice but the government seems to be adamant to go ahead with its own model and on the other hand nobody among waste management companies," said Nasarullah.
The Rule 5 of the Action Plan on solid waste management under heading initiatives taken by government discusses government's plan of creating cluster waste processing sites. Under each cluster three to four towns are clubbed as a single cluster unit. All the municipal solid waste will be transported from adjoining towns to one single location. In Baramulla cluster municipal waste would be transported from Tangmarg , Sopore , Wattergam and Pattan to Baramulla town landfill site and then treated. Experts argue that why can't municipal authorities or contracting firms treat this waste inside the towns itself as it would involve lot of time, energy and money for transporting tons of garbage on daily basis from various towns to a larger town?
Plus the trash will get scattered on the way while being transported in tippers and trolleys. In Rajouri cluster, government plans to get all the garbage from 4 towns of Kalakot, Thamamandi, Nowshehra and Sunderbani to Rajouri town. The average distance of these towns from Rajouri town is 30-35 kms. "Ramban cluster which has no space for land-filling will huge solid waste from towns of Batote and Banihal and Batote. In case national highway gets closed, the garbage laden trucks will get stuck on the highway for days together. Ramban town is already chocked with municipal waste and most of the garbage is dumped in Chenab river and once trash from Banihal and Batote will reach Ramban it will create a havoc in the area," said Muzaffar Zaman a PHD scholar in environmental sciences at Kashmir University. |
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