BHUBANESWAR: Plagued with grievances related to poor garbage handling in residential areas, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to allow locals and Swachh Sathis in every ward to certify waste collection for release of funds to private organisations engaged for this purpose.
A proposal to this effect has been discussed in a meeting chaired by Mayor Sulochana Das and Municipal Commissioner Vijay Amruta Kulange recently. As decided in the meeting the BMC will soon maintain a register at ward level in which a local from each street or lane will certify how many households the NGOs, roped in by the BMC, covered during door-to-door garbage collection.
Similarly, Swachh Sathis appointed by BMC in all 67 wards will also verify and certify the number of households NGOs covered on day for waste collection in their locality. This verification by locals and Swachh Sathis will be then compared with the quantity of waste the NGOs collected from households in a day from each ward.
“On an average around 350 to 400 gram waste is generated at household level everyday. Comparison of this data with the household figure will give a fair idea whether the service providers are actually covering the number of households maintained in the register,” said BMC deputy commissioner for sanitation Suvendu Kumar Sahoo.
He said the practice will be followed in all wards and the registers will be counter signed by the sanitation inspectors for release of funds to the service providers.The civic body, he said, has decided to go for this strategy to improve the door-to-door garbage collection and bring more transparency in the process.
Sahoo said as of now the service providers engaged in door-to-door waste collection were being provided funds on the basis of number of kilometres they covered in a day. They were being paid cost of petrol for every 8 km along with daily wage of the driver and two semi-skilled workers to provide the service. It, however, will now be changed to number of households they cover each day.
BMC has engaged a total seven NGOs as per new waste collection mechanism. The NGOs have so far started collecting household waste in over 50 wards. The civic body will handover the remaining wards to them shortly, officials said.