Waste figures for 2031 inflated

The Revised Master Plan 2031 has apparently laid the foundation for a perennially bigger garbage scam in the future. The Bengaluru Development Authority (BDA) has projected the city’s population to be about two crores in 2031. The garbage generation will be 18,390 Tonnes Per Day (TPD). At present, the city’s population is 1.2 crore.

The projected figure has baffled many including BBMP’s joint commissioner of solid waste management, Sarfaraz Khan. “Of course, the increase in population in Bengaluru will give rise to economic activities and garbage generation will shoot up. But it is not possible that the waste generation will be 18,000 TPD. At the most, it can double from the existing 4,000 TPD (in Palike limits) but it cannot be 18,000 TPD,” says Khan.

At the Bengaluru Vision Group meeting in 2016, former BBMP commissioner Siddaiah had stressed that currently the waste generation in the city is not more than 2,500 TPD and a substantial amount of waste is not going for processing. He had said that the Palike exchequer is incurring a loss of Rs 250 crore to Rs 300 crore every year.

Palike sources say that a field survey of waste generation was conducted in some wards in 2013. This revealed that hardly eight TPD was generated there against the regular bills for 15 TPD. Even now, garbage trucks are not equipped with Geographical Positioning Systems (GPS) to track their movement. This is a 10-year-old recommendation, which the Palike could never implement.

Segregation of waste at source has gone for a toss. There is no mechanism in place to conduct auditing of waste generation in the city, and scientific waste processing units have turned into dumping yards. Some of these units have been closed following protests.  When contacted, Siddaiah refused to comment on BDA’s projections but felt that the waste generation would not be 18,000 TPD in 2031.

Requesting anonymity, an urban planner says the projections have no basis and whoever prepared the prelude to BDA’s master plan lives in some illusory world. “What expertise does BDA have in solid waste management to project such a high figure. It has clearly laid the foundation for a scam in the future,” the expert warns.