BBMP starts penalising people for littering, not sorting waste

 The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has started penalising people almost a week after the rule on mandatory segregation of waste at source came into force.

While segregation of waste at source hasn’t fully taken off in most parts of the city, the BBMP has started imposing penalty in localities where people have been trained and where littering is prevalent.

R Venkatachalapathi, the BBMP’s Joint Commissioner for Mahadevapura, said people dropping litter at public places in his zone had been penalised. “We started it today (Monday). Our health inspector, Ramesh Kumar, imposed penalty on people who ignored our repeated warnings and threw garbage at public places,” he said.

In other areas, however, the BBMP isn’t penalising people for not segregating waste at source. Speaking to DH, the Joint Commissioner of Mahadevapura zone, Dr B V Vasanthi Amar, advocated giving people more time to understand the concept. “There are people who are not aware that segregation of waste is mandatory. We are educating them. We’ll start imposing the penalty after a few days,” he said.

The BBMP says it will collect kitchen waste or wet waste from each household every day while dry waste will be lifted twice a week. Waste collectors still don’t turn up regularly in many areas. But those who do are only collecting mixed waste.

Residents complain that garbage collectors do not have separate bins as mandated by the BBMP. Amit Nigli, a resident of OMBR Layout in Banaswadi, said the shortage of auto trolleys was forcing people to throw garbage on vacant sites, at public places or on the roadside.

Manohar H N, from HMT Layout, said garbage collection in his locality was erratic.