BENGALURU: City Mayor K Padmavati has been in the news for leading a drive to clean up KR Market. Recently she even accompanied the volunteer group ‘Ugly Indians’ to repaint the market.
While Bengaluru’s largest wholesale market is showered with such attention, we made a visit to city’s biggest fish and meat market. Russell Market lacks a basic waste-segregation system, and rotting meat and fish waste lie in mixed piles with vegetables and packaging plastic. Trash even pokes out of clogged drains.
When City Express waits around to find out what happens to these piles, we see a JCB earthmover scooping them up as is. We try to photograph this and a man who claims to be a “supervisor” attempts to intervene and says that there is “no problem collecting waste from this market... leave us your card and, if we do run into any trouble, we will let you know”.
A chicken stall owner says that this is how waste disposal is regularly done in the market. “We leave all of it in some spots around the market and the corporation staff comes and collects it from there,” he says. There is no segregation at source and no one insists.
Vani Murthy, from the Solid Waste Management Round Table, says that meat and fish wastes have to be separated. “If we don’t, the composting and biomethanisation will not be effective,” she says.
According to her, the civic authorities should leave the bins for segregation.
Sarfaraz Khan, BBMP’s Joint Commissioner for Solid Waste Management, disagrees.
“We can’t provide everything. The vendors make enough profits to get their own bins. If they do, then we will collect segregated waste from their doorstep...This is the rule we have in mind for KR Market and it will be extended to Russel Market.”
There are guidelines, given by MoEF’s CPR Environment Education Centre, for disposing waste in meat and fish market. It directs vendors not to throw any waste in front of their shops or open spaces around, they are to keep “non-corrosive container/containers not exceeding 100-litre capacity with lid handle and the rim at the bottom” and deposit waste in such containers. These containers must then be emptied into larger containers provided by the association. Russell Market’s reality is far from this ideal.
The vendors are waiting for the bins to be supplied by the corporation officials. “We don’t have garbage bins or place to segregate waste,” says Zameer, who works with a fish stall. “We are forced to dump all of it outside the building.”
The drainage system around the fish stall is blocked and water leaks from under the slabs and forms puddles on the roads. Into this mixes foul-smelling water that drains from fish stalls. A fish stall owner says, “Fish scales and guts stink and so do rotten fish, we can’t keep them inside the stalls and we don’t have a bin outside to leave them in. We are forced to pile it over the rest of the garbage.”
“The rest of the garbage” also includes poultry waste from butcheries and all of this is left behind the beef market.
N Manjunath Prasad, Commissioner of BBMP, says, “All markets in and around the city are equally important. We have to start the cleanliness drive from someplace and so we did with KR Market,” he says.
“The BBMP has prepared a Detailed Project Report for Russell Market and includes waste management... we will implement it as soon as possible.”