The Indian Express    31.07.2012

city anchor: PCMC’s ‘double-standards’ force SWaCH to quit Pimpri-Chinchwad

SWaCH, an autonomous wastepicker cooperative, which has drawn praise
for its role in keeping parts of Pimpri-Chinchwad clean, is on its way
out of the town. Frustrated by PCMC’s “double standards,” SWaCH has
decided to terminate the MoU that it had inked with the civic body.

A delegation of wastepickers of SWaCH, led by labour leader Dr
Baba Adhav, met Municipal Commissioner Dr Shrikar Pardeshi on Monday and
served a notice seeking termination of the MoU between SWaCH and PCMC.

SWaCH said its decision stemmed from unfair and dual system of
waste collection being implemented by the PCMC in the city. It said they
took care of Divisional Wards A and D while areas under Division Wards B
and C were contracted out to BVG Kshitij India Limited.

Lakshmi Narayan, governing board member of SWaCH, said the
organisation that has been hired for other wards runs on weight-based
waste collection model that has been denounced by several national and
international ‘Best Practice’ documents as it goes against the
principles of reduce, reuse and recycle.

SWaCH has been operating in PCMC since October 2010, with 263
wastepickers collecting waste from 2,43,000 households via 133 Tata Ace
hoppers.

“Since the inception there has been many issues that have been
brought to the notice of the administration on a regular basis. However,
the PCMC has not bothered to address any of them. Moreover, in complete
violation of the spirit of the original proposal, PCMC signed a five
year contract with BVG in October 2011 for door-to-door collection of
waste in the wards B and C without charging user fees. PCMC has been
unfair by introducing a non-user fee-based and weight-based system in
these wards of the city,” said Narayan.

“The models of SWaCH and BVG cannot work together as citizens will
not pay for a service that is being provided free in two other wards.
The progressive increase in number of people paying user fees will not
be possible any more,” she said.

SWaCH claimed that PCMC would benefit by tying up with them and
will lose crores if they join hands with other agency. “In our model,
PCMC will pay less while in other model, PCMC will have to dig a big
hole in its pocket.”

Pardeshi said SWaCH was apparently facing financial constraints
as the users were refusing to pay. He said he is going through a copy of
government resolution.

“After I study it thoroughly, I will take the decision. I will strictly go by the rule book,” he said.

SWaCH claimed that its model of solid waste management is
decentralised, environmental-friendly and user fee-based that upgrades
livelihoods of wastepickers and promotes community participation besides
putting accountability on service provider.

Dr Adhav disapproved that PCMC had served a notice to SWaCH
during the period while negotiations were on, “It is not possible to try
such innovations when a civic body is not committed to the principles
or values of a cooperative and is keen on pursuing a contractor-based
model,” Adhav said.

SWaCH said PCMC had approached it in 2009 to suggest a universal,
user fee-based door-to-door waste collection model using hopper
vehicles purchased with funds from JNNURM.