The Hindu           01.04.2011

Udupi CMC to overhaul garbage collection system

To improve cleanliness and facilitate scientific garbage disposal, the Udupi City Municipal Council (CMC) has decided to overhaul its entire garbage collection system in the city.

Hitherto, door-to-door garbage collection in the city was confined to three zones — old city limits, East and West zones. As many as eight self-help groups were involved in the task of door-to-door garbage collection.

Each house was to pay Rs. 30 a month for the SHGs as a fee for door-to-door garbage collection. The garbage collected was being transported to the Solid Waste Management Plant at Karval in Alevoor village. But this did not work as planned. According to CMC president Kiran Kumar, there was poor response to the door-to-door collection of garbage from houses in areas such as Moodabettu, Malpe, Nittoor and Kodankur.

Hence the CMC has decided to divide the city comprising 35 municipal wards into 10 zones to improve monitoring and collection of garbage from every house. Each zone would have three or four municipal wards. Tenders would be floated for collection of garbage in every zone.

“We hope that creation of 10 zones would help the CMC in proper implementation of garbage disposal in the city. But the scheme can be a success only if people cooperate whole-heartedly”, Mr. Kumar said.

For some big commercial establishments, the charge for collection of garbage was up to Rs. 3,000 a month. But there were about eight such big commercial establishments in the city which generated huge quantities of garbage. Some establishments voluntarily transported their garbage to Karval.

Udupi city generates about 60 tonnes of garbage daily. The garbage was treated scientifically through land-filling at the plant at Karval. “The use of plastic items by people especially tourists is a major problem. It is creating problems in land-filling”, he said.

A CMC delegation comprising Mr. Kumar, MLA Raghupati Bhat and CMC Commissioner Gokuldas Nayak had held preliminary talks with a company called Rochem Separation Systems (India) Pvt. Ltd. in Mumbai a week ago for garbage processing and exploring the possibility of generation of power using the garbage.