Policy vacuum over garbage collection in PGs

The BBMP’s plan of collecting garbage door-to-door 100% may have hit a roadblock in the form of PG accommodations and service apartments.

As the civic body vacillates on whether to count such buildings as bulk garbage generators or individual house units, they have no approved contractors to collect waste. As a result, those servicing such accommodations are forced to dump garbage in undesignated spots.

This is a matter of concern for the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) as such accommodations are mushrooming with the rapidly multiplying city population. The mounting garbage pile in areas like Mahadevapura, KR Puram and the neighbourhoods of East Bengaluru where the scope for Paying Guest (PG) accommodations.

PGs are growing without reasonably priced alternatives, even as the burgeoning IT industry lures thousands from outside. The citizen survey estimates that Mahadevapura alone has 350 PGs.

Some residents feel PGs should be treated as bulk generators and urge the BBMP to appoint contractors to pick up the waste they create. “PG owners are not responsible and need to be regulated,” said Anjali Saini, who resides in the Mahadevapura zone.

“They don’t provide a central location for tenants to dispose of garbage, which they should do. There’s a move to classify them as bulk generators to make them responsible and get an independent BBMP-approved contractor to collect waste,” Anjali added.

Since employees may have different shifts, they may not be able to hand over the garbage to the collectors, it makes more sense to treat them as apartments and provide a central bin for segregated waste, Anjali further said.

A top BBMP official admitted that the civic body has no clear garbage collection policy on the PG accommodations and service apartments, though he insisted that Palike workers regularly collect garbage from them. He also promised to look into the matter. But the buildings accommodating paying guests have several other problems. They violate the building norms set by the BBMP, making them vulnerable to collapses. Also, they have no designated parking areas.

BBMP Commissioner N Manjunath Prasad said the revised BDA master plan 2031 has solutions for PG accommodations. Also, the state government has set guidelines for PGs that will come to effect soon, he added.