The Times of India                 03.06.2013

Garbage collection from doorstep paying dividends

SURAT: Tagged as one of the top three cleanest cities of the country, Surat is witnessing a distinct shift in garbage collection.

After elected wing declared it's intention to make public places of the city garbage and container-free a year ago, the steps taken by civic administration of Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) to increase, strengthen and expand it's door-to-door collection network has started paying dividends now.

Today, the city sprawling over 326 sq km with nearly 10.5 lakh households, generates close to 1,500 tonnes of solid waste daily. More than half of this is collected from door-to-door on daily basis using nearly 325 vehicles.

SMC, one of the first civic bodies in the country, started this collection system in 2004 and by 2006 it had nearly 200 vehicles lifting 350-400 tonnes of garbage directly from homes. It spent nearly Rs 10 crore then against Rs 17 crore on yearly basis today.

"The desired effect of this expansion of door-to-door collection is seen on the garbage containers in the city. The numbers have come down by about 1,000," said EH Pathan, executive engineer, solid waste disposal, SMC.

"The effect of increased door-to-door garbage is that now we lift just 650-700 containers for disposal of garbage and expenses on this count has come down by nearly Rs 60 lakh per month," said Pathan and added, "This means, as we pay more for door-to-door collection, we are saving Rs 7 crore on annual basis on container lifting count and over all spending the same amount of money for higher amount of garbage disposal."

"We want our citizens to develop a habit of keeping garbage and litter that is produced in their homes or by them to be kept within the house. The network of SMC will collect it once a day to keep city clean and healthy," said mayor Raju Desai. "We don't want people to throw their garbage in containers outside their societies and spread pollution," he added.

Surat had 1,650 containers placed on different city roads and public places for garbage collection and it used to empty all of them either on daily basis or on alternate day basis spending nearly Rs 20 crore on annual basis.

SMC pays Rs 250 per trip for emptying a container.

Bhimji Patel, who recently retired as chairman of standing committee, said, "Money is not the main issue here. We are determined to keep our city cleanest of all and so would not mind paying a little more if required."