75-day initiative to clean up in Andhra's Sattenapalli town
GUNTUR: The Sattenapalli municipality has started a 75-day programme in three phases to take up garbage collection, sanitation and segregation of compost effectively in the town.
Currently, the garbage collection from each house in the town is irregular, resulting in heaps of garbage accumulation on roadsides. This is also leading to health problems.
Hence, municipal commissioner P Srinivasa Rao interacted with the public and took up the cleanliness programme with the cooperation of the people.
Sattenapalli town, with a population of 61,000, produces approximately 550 metric tonnes of garbage each day from 30 wards.
There are 23 regular sanitation workers, 134 outsourcing workers, 324 volunteers and village secretary staff collecting garbage through door to door service, removing silt from drains and cleaning roads.
In the first phase, which started from November 1, the workers have been honing white hats.
The officers divided the town into two divisions under 53 micro-packets. In each division, 350 houses were counted as one micro-packet, which was further separated into 360 gates.
Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) tags will be given to every house in the first phase.
The municipal commissioner appealed to the citizens to separate wet and dry waste before handing over the garbage to the sanitation workers.
The first phase will go on for 25 days and as per the Solid Waste Management Rules (2016), each family has to divide the garbage into three parts by keeping biodegradable waste in the green container, non-biodegradable in blue and other waste in a paper cover.
In the second phase, the municipal staff will issue notices to the households, which did not follow the norms in the first phase, this time wearing green hats for another 25 days.
During the third phase, the civic staff will impose penalties on the households, which did not follow the civic body’s instruction.
The workers would be wearing red hats during the last phase, which will also continue for 25 days.
“The municipality authorities have the power to take legal action as per the National Green Tribunal guidelines against those, who do not cooperate with the civic body to segregate compost before handing over the waste to the sanitation workers,” Srinivasa Rao said.
As per the information, about 6,000 families have been cooperating with the civic body of the total 15,000 families.