Dearth of machines delays 'historical' waste clearance

1.65 lakh tonnes of garbage piled up at Compost Corporation

The Karnataka Compost Development Corporation (KCDC), with just one sorting (segregation) machine at Singasandra near Hosur Road, is struggling hard to handle 1.65 lakh tonnes of “historical” waste — garbage that has piled up over the years.

The sorting machine at the plant has a capacity to handle 200 tonnes of waste per day and this had led to a huge piles of garbage occupying three-fourths of the concrete yard.

The High Court, meanwhile, has asked the Corporation to work in three shifts of eight hours each until a new plant is set up on the adjacent land.

“Garbage has not been dumped in the yard since 2008. Yet, heaps of trash lay uncleared at the disposal site for want of sorting machines. Hence, we requested BBMP to provide us with another automatic machine at a cost of Rs one crore.
They agreed to set it up at the adjacent plot but are delaying the execution of the plan,” said Venkoji Rao, advisor, KCDC.

Pursuant to the orders of the High Court, the Corporation has been working in two shifts processing 200 tonnes of garbage daily.

BBMP recently promised to hand over 31 acres at Chikkanagamangala to KCDC for processing 300 tonnes to 400 tonnes of wet waste a day.

ABIDe member and activist Ashwin Mahesh, said: “In a place like KCDC, there is a clear need for more sorting machines. Having such machines near the landfills would ease the situation. This might be a solution to clear the historical waste at KCDC. Another alternative is setting up smaller decentralised wet waste centers instead of the centralised one at KCDC.” 

When contacted, L N Belavanki, Managing Director of KCDC, told Deccan Herald that the BBMP was trying to speed up the process of setting up the machine in the land adjacent to the site.

He said the construction of  a road near the site has already started.
“We have submitted a detailed project report to the BBMP about a week ago on the processing plant at Chikkanagamangala. Within a month, we will start in-house processing of waste at KCDC campus to eliminate the foul odour and the civic body has come forward to help us in this regard too,” Belavanki added.

Ravi Chander of Bangalore City Connect said that the machines need to be installed at the earliest as it would take at least a year to clear all the historical waste from the KCDC plant.

Once the trash collected over there gets cleared, KCDC can start receiving 200 tonnes of garbage from the City. The two machines that would be installed to clear the historical debris can be used to remove the trash from other landfill sites too in the coming days, he said.

The historical debris collected at KCDC was also highlighted at the ‘Wake up, Clean up Bengaluru’ event.

Palike Commissioner Siddaiah was not available for comments.