CM's pledge: Bangalore will be garbage-free in six months

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah reiterated on Wednesday that Bangalore would be garbage-free in six months.

“The State government will extend all possible help to the BBMP to make the City free from waste,” he said after inaugurating the ambitious ‘Kasa Muktha Bengaluru’ (garbage-free Bangalore), a pilot scheme to make 22 select wards free from trash.

The chief minister added that segregation at source was a prerequisite for any solution to the garbage problem. Segregation would be made compulsory in all wards, he announced. Siddaramaiah acknowledged that the BBMP was struggling to address the problem.

The civic authority might be split for better administration and discussions were being held with legislators and Palike authorities in that regard, he said. “... It is difficult for the BBMP to handle everything as the City has grown from 225 sq km to 800 sq km and so has the population,” Siddaramaiah observed.

The BBMP Commissioner, M Lakshminarayana, said that the Palike will co-operate with the state government and see to it that the city becomes a zero-garbage area.

The ‘Kasa Muktha’ is a BBMP initiative as part of its ‘Wake Up Clean Up’ waste management drive. It is part of the commitment the Palike had made to the High Court. Under the initiative, 22 select wards will have the waste segregated at source. The trash would later be processed and recycled.

Solid waste management expert, Kalpana Kar, said that under the initiative, civic workers would stop collecting mixed waste and encourage the citizens to segregate the trash themselves.

The deadline to achieve the target is eight weeks from July 24. The initiative will focus on door-to-door collection system and traders/shops.

‘Kasa Muktha Bengaluru’

* Civic workers and contractors will be trained.
* Waste will be segregated at source.
* Back-end categories to transport different streams of segregated waste to appropriate processing  facilities.
* ‘Visual Cleanliness’ to be introduced for a change in people’s attitude.
* Audit, monitoring and feedback to plan, if necessary, and spread to rest of the City and institutionalise the same in the revised tender conditions for solid waste management.
* ‘Kasa Muktha’ wards will use nGog system — ‘No Garbage on Ground’ — mandated by the apex court to transfer waste from small to large vehicles, avoiding
creation of black spots.