Waste segregation fails to catch on in City

The second day of the new system of garbage disposal in the City saw the segregation at source drive go for a toss in many areas.

Garbage piled up in bulk in many places including some posh areas such as Shanthi Nagar, JP Nagar, Banashankari and Basavanagudi. Areas like Shivajinagar, Chamarajpet, Yarab Nagar, Kurubarahalli, Yelachenahalli and Ittamadu were in a utter mess.

The situation all over the City sent across a single message - that the segregation message had not gone across to the citizens. At Shivajinagar, a woman denied having heard of segregation.

Her routine did not change in the last three days as she continued to throw garbage packed in a polythene at a nearest road junction on Shivaji Road. She hasn’t been doing anything different than others in her locality, who have been throwing mixed waste at the junction for the last three days which includes the construction material, waste Pooja items, kitchen waste and the sanitary waste including the odd cotton mattress.

Blissfully ignorant

At Sampangirama Nagar, the road from Rajaram Mohan Roy junction to Richmond Circle Flyover, a huge heap of garbage lay uncleared. Residents said the pile had been lying uncleared past fortnight.n days. However, most of the people have no idea about the segregation-at-source, the fate of garbage once lifted from the City and the protests taking place at the landfill site.

S Sanyasi, a resident of Sampangiram Nagar, blamed the BBMP for not lifting garbage from his area.

“The government and the BBMP have failed miserably to deal with the garbage,” said Sanyasi.

He claimed that he segregated garbage everyday, packed it a polythene bag and throws it at the place where every family in the area dump. He was also not aware of the places where the garbage was going once lifted from the vicinity and the plight of residents of the village where the City’s garbage was dumped till recently.

The garbage disposal problem seemed to have intensified in most areas as the Pourakarmikas (sanitation workers) did not collect waste for the last three days, although the BBMP made provision that they should collect wet waste daily.

There is a feeling among BBMP officers that garbage contractors did not want the segregation-at-source system to succeed. The local BBMP authorities too did not monitor the garbage collection in their respective areas.

Corporators have not been too enthusiastic about the new system. Not many have met residents in their wards to educate them about the benefits of the new system.

Palike Commissioner Rajneesh Goel hinted at possibility of contractors trying to derail the new system. He said: “People will have to fall in line from Wednesday onwards and anybody trying to sabotage the Palike's efforts will pay heavy price.”