BANGALORE: No garbage truck from Bangalore will enter Mandur after December 1. This decision was announced on Tuesday after a meeting at Vikasa Soudha chaired by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.
Representatives of the village came out of the meeting holding a copy of the government’s schedule to taper the dumping.
Bangalore District In-charge Minister Ramalinga Reddy, BBMP Mayor B S Satyanarayana and MLA Aravind Limbavali also attended the meeting.
About 200 trucks now carry garbage to the village every day. “The number will come down over the next five months,” BBMP commissioner M Lakshminarayana announced after the talks.
The government will also initiate prompt action to process the 40 lakh tonnes of garbage piled up at Mandur. In three years, the dump will be cleared completely to restore the village to a healthy environment. The landfill, once cleared of garbage, will be handed over to the Mandur panchayat to develop a park, according to an agreement the government has signed.
The Health Department will be entrusted with the task of controlling mosquitos, flies and other insects in the area. Ramalinga Reddy assured Mandur residents that a garbage processing plant would be ready at Doddballapur within three months. It will considerably ease the load being sent to Mandur, he said.
Three more such processing plants are scheduled to come up over the next few months. Mandur residents agreed to end their indefinite hunger strike following the agreement.
However, they warned the government they would launch a more vigorous protest if it went back on its assurances. Reddy and Sathyanarayana visited Mandur on Tuesday evening.
Freedom fighter H S Doreswamy was present at a meeting convened by Siddaramaiah to resolve the problem on Tuesday.
Sridhar, a resident of Mandur, said the government had given a copy of the agreement to village representatives.
“It says the BBMP shall send waste till November 30, 2014. This means no trucks will be sent from December 1,” he said.
For three months from now, 200 trucks will be sent. The number will come down to 50 later.The village turned down any special BBMP grants. “We felt this would create unnecessary politics within the village,” Sridhar said.