The Times of India          07.11.2013

A2Z to start collecting waste from November 7

VARANASI: After a failed start to its waste operation across the city from November 1, the solid waste management firm, A2Z, will start its door-to-door collection of solid waste from Bhelupur ward on Thursday. Though the residents as well as their local representatives believe that it is too liitle a step towards a problem which has the city suffering from insanitation from a long time.

Confirming this, municipal commissioner Umakant Tripathi told TOI, "The firm will start its primary (collection from doorsteps) as well as secondary (from common places) collection of solid waste to be transported to their treatment plant at Karsada."

Recently the firm had submitted its action plan to mayor Ramgopal Mohale that mentioned that the firm will start collecting the waste from garbage collection centre (GCC) in Bhelupur ward from Thursday. Though the action plan did not mention the date from when the firm will start its door-to-door collection and transportation operation across the city.

Explaining the reason for missing out the November 1 deadline, director A2Z, BN Tiwari said, that the sanitation was not to be disturbed during the festivities. "Now that the festival is over, we will start collection of garbage from Bhelupur ward and will gradually expand the area of our operation," said the official.

The official also said that the firm cannot start the collection of garbage from all the wards on the scheduled date as recruitment of sanitation workers is still to be done. "We do not have enough manpower now and we are yet to get an electricity connection despite DM's order for the same a few weeks back. In fact, the main reason behind delay starting the collection of the garbage from the GCC is that there is a severe crisis of dumping space so we decided to first treat the garbage at the treatment plant to ease out the space problem," said Tiwari.

Though, the official admitted that the machines at the treatment plant are still not functional and are being repaired, yet he remained hopeful of starting the treatment work soon. Meanwhile, the city health officer BN Chaubey said that the road sweeping will still be done by the VMC employees apart from the solid waste management in the rest of the city.