VIJAYAWADA:In a bid to make the city bin- free, the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) has decided to put an end to door-to-door segregation of garbage and collect household waste through a compactor vehicle with a public address system.
According to VMC officials, Municipal Commissioner J Nivas has mooted the concept with the aim to achieve a better rank in the Swachh Survekshan-2019 survey. VMC is following in the footsteps of Indore Municipal Corporation (IMC), which has introduced segregation of wet and dry waste from households in two separate vehicles equipped with public address system.
As per the official estimates, the city generates around 550 metric tonnes of garbage and it has become a herculean task for the sanitation staff to collect the waste piled up in the bins across the city. The garbage bin-free initiative will be implemented on a pilot basis in division numbers 44 and 47 and we will replicate it in the rest of the divisions after taking the residents’ response into consideration.
When contacted, Nivas said the civic body has recently purchased 12 compactor vehicles at an estimated cost of `2.12 crore as part of transforming Vijayawada into a bin-free city. Another 24 compactor vehicles were also bought by VMC with `12 crore funds allocated by Swachh Bharat Mission.
The compactor vehicles will halt for at least one minute in front of each house and call out to the residents to dump their household waste into it. If residents fail to attend to the call in time, the compactor vehicle will leave the place. Each vehicle has the capacity to shift 70 tonnes of garbage at one go. This will automatically reduce the burden from sanitation staff who are engaged in door-to-door segregation of garbage. The corporation’s time and revenue will also be saved,” Nivas added.