Hyderabad residents have taken to GHMC’s plan of a bin-free city, says NGT panel

HYDERABAD: In a report to the National Green Tribunal (NGT), a Joint Committee found that the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) levied fines in the past year for littering in open stormwater drains in the city, collecting Rs 4.63 lakh from the violators in 299 instances and Rs 10,000 by imposing penalties on people for littering on roads.

Apart from that, the committee stated that the GHMC regularly clears “small heaps of sporadic garbage” on roadsides and the public in Hyderabad has stopped dumping waste along the roadside due to lack of dustbins as part of GHMC’s plan of making the city bin-free. 

The Joint Committee was tasked by the NGT to check whether the Solid Waste Management (SWM) Rules, 2016, is being effectively implemented by the civic body, and if not, then whether the Telangana State Pollution Control Board (TSPCB) took any action.

The committee comprised three members, a TSPCB engineer, Additional Collector of Hyderabad and Khairatabad Zonal Commissioner of GHMC. The committee stated that the city’s residents have adopted to the idea of a bin-free city and owing to the behavioural change, they are handing over the waste to the Swachh Auto Tippers (SAT) and a majority of the people have stopped dumping waste on the roadside.

The report mentions that there are 3,515 SATs in the city that collect segregated waste from the households, after which the waste is transported to 32 transfer stations from where waste is further sent to the disposal facility within 12 hours that has a capacity to treat and dispose 5,978 tonnes of waste per day (TPD). The disposal facility also has a 19.8MW waste-to-energy plant, whose capacity will be increased to 48MW. 

Waste Management

Of the 32 transfer stations in the city, eight are conventional and 24 are equipped with portable and static compactors. Also, there are 78 dry waste resource centres, handling 1.5TPD each.