CHENNAI: Almost into six months, the source segregation of waste, launched by the city Corporation, is limping with most zones showing only a slight decrease in waste sent to landfills. While the civic body continues to blame lukewarm citizen participation, issues such as shortage of conservancy staff and presence of bulk dustbins on street corners have also prevented the campaign from gaining speed. As only a very few residents segregate the waste at source, the burden falls on conservancy workers who claim they are already massively short-staffed.
“Chennai has only 18,000 conservancy workers but it should ideally have 33,000 workers to effectively perform conservancy duties,” said L Sundararajan, president of the Madras Corporation Red Flag Union.
“The (Corporation’s) bylaws say one conservancy worker should be employed for clearing every 500 sq metres. However, this has not been implemented,” he said, explaining how conservancy workers face undue flak for overflowing garbage in the city.
Conservancy workers claimed that only people in posh areas such as Zone 13 - Adyar, Zone 8 - Anna Nagar and Zone 10 - Kodambakkam segregate their waste and called for better sensitisation in lower-middle class and middle class localities to ensure less waste reaches the landfill. The Corporation has not reduced the number of bulk 500 litre/1000- litre dustbins which are found on street corners.
Senior officials in the Solid Waste Management Department claim that the city hasn’t progressed enough to start reducing bulk dustbins. “If we remove the bulk dustbins, the public will start dumping waste on the roads,” said P Madhusudhan Reddy, Deputy Commissioner (Health).
However, conservancy workers feel ample bulk dustbins provide residents an option of dumping unsegregated waste. “People choose to parcel unsegregated waste and dump them in the dustbin at their street-corner rather than deal with us because we tell them to segregate waste,” said K Saravanan, a conservancy worker.
Zonal officers told Express that reduction of bulk dustbins which characterized the pilot source segregation project which debuted in Manali in late 2015 is not feasible for other zones. “We handle 630 tonnes of waste every day unlike Manali which handles only 60 tonnes,” said Natarajan, the Zone 10-Kodambakkam officer.
