Former mayor, BBMP leader say contractor mafia derailed garbage collection

Former mayor G Padmavathi and BJP leader in the BBMP council Padmanabha Reddy have blamed the contractor mafia for the failure of the garbage collection system.

They have also said the lobby has been derailing the efforts to implement the Solid Waste Management (SWM) rules, 2016.

Tender for garbage collection was called two years ago with the condition to mandate waste segregation at source. "Work was awarded recently for only 38 of the 198 wards, and we are not seeing good progress in terms of segregation at source," Reddy said.

Regarding allegations that corporators were hand-in-glove with the contractors, Reddy said a particular corporator in the health committee of the BBMP sat on the tender.

"If (the allegation) is true, let the officials complete the process now. As corporators are not part of the administration, they should have done it already," he said.

To a question, Padmavathi mentioned that funds allocated for SWM had been diverted to development works in both the Congress and BJP times.

'Funds misused'

"During the Congress regime, we had set up eight processing units, of which four are not functioning. Instead of developing processing units, the funds were diverted towards developing roads and drains in the villages," she said.

Padmavathi said the root of the crisis lay in the BBMP’s failure to involve people, especially the residents' welfare associations. She said the government’s decision to levy Rs 200 cess per house for garbage collection only transfers the burden on people.

To Reddy’s allegation that the proposal was made during the Congress’s time in power, she said the original idea was to collect Rs 100 cess from the site.

"Each site has multiple houses and therefore, it won’t burden the residents. Imposing Rs 200 per house is entirely different and becomes a burden," she added.

Both agreed that the answer lies in local waste segregation and processing. "Now, we are spending over Rs 500 crore for biomining the old landfills. If waste is not segregated, taxpayers' money will continue to be spent on such projects," Reddy said.