New waste management body draws brickbats

The Bengaluru Solid Waste Management Company will only add to citizens’ woes, activists say

The government’s decision to establish the Bengaluru Solid Waste Management Company is getting flak from citizens’ groups.

The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) says the special purpose vehicle (SPV) helps with quick decision-making and implementation.

BBMP Commissioner Manjunath Prasad says the BBMP will still be responsible for 51 percent of all solid waste management duties, while the new body will handle 49.

Door-to-door collection, secondary collection, transportation and processing of waste will be the responsibility of the new body, to be headed by the Additional Chief Secretary of the Urban Development Department.

H C Sharatchandra, member of the High Court-appointed Technical Guidance Committee, is puzzled by the suddenness of the move.

“I have been requesting a separate entity since 2010, and the idea was barely entertained. But now, the government seems to be in a hurry,” he says.

The new organisation’s structure makes him believe it won’t deliver.

“They have gone ahead and created another government body with a highly bureaucratic structure,” he says.

Sapna Karim, head of civic participation at Janaagraha, says parastatal agencies are of no use unless they are made accountable to the city-government and not the state.

“The new body lacks accountability. This just adds to the plethora of parastatals we already have,” she says.

Multiple bodies just make life harder for citizens, activists say. “We won’t know who is accountable for what. If I go to my ward office, officials there are responsible for nothing,” says activist Tara Krishnaswamy.

Sapna and Tara believe empowerment of the BBMP can solve many problems. “That way, we wouldn’t need these parastatals,” says Sapna.

Tara is cutting about the government’s plans. “Scrap the BBMP at this point, we have a parastatal for everything now anyway,” she says.