NEW DELHI: Many residents from across the city have been raising concerns over the municipal corporations not lifting bio-medical waste generated by Covid-19 home isolation patients and houses under quarantine, which they fear can lead to the infection being spread.
Rahul Srivastava, a resident of Lakshmi Nagar, who lives in a builder flat said the house opposite his had a Covid positive patient while they would throw the biomedical waste such as gloves, masks etc in a bin outside their house, the waste was not collected for days. “I had to call up the district helpline, which gave a delayed response, but still the waste was lifted after almost a week or so. The sanitation workers have not been lifting the waste saying they were not given sufficient safety gear and hence they feared getting infected and did not lift the waste,” said Srivastava.
Savita Gupta, a resident of south Delhi’s Kalkaji DDA flats too raised similar concerns. “Packets of waste from two houses under quarantine on the same floor kept lying for days before being lifted. The residents’ body had to call the local councillor to report the issue,” said Gupta.
Amid concerns, the south MCD on Friday said it has made special arrangements to lift bio-medical waste from homes of Covid positive patients and has deployed auto-tippers (vehicle with automated system atop to collect waste) across all its 104 wards.
Meanwhile, officials from the North and East civic bodies said that while there were no pending complaints of waste collection as such, a meeting was addressed at headquarter level to streamline the system.