Mobile waste management squad to penalise littering

Trichy:
Taking a cue from police patrol and beat vehicles assigned for
surveillance activity, the Trichy Corporation has launched an exclusive
mobile solid waste management (SWM) flying squad. With an officer on
board, the squad will identify and penalise people on the spot for
violations pertaining to the revised solid waste management (SWM) rules.
The civic body has identified several hotspots in the city where public
littering is significant and the squad will be spending additional
hours in inspecting such neighbourhoods.

So far, the civic body had
been heavily spending time and resources on spreading awareness on SWM
such as source segregation and mandatory handing over of accumulated
domestic waste to sanitary workers in door-to-door waste collection.
Acknowledging that the need to penalise residents who are not
cooperating with the efforts of the civic body to improvise city’s
cleanliness, Trichy Corporation has planned to target frequent violators
considered as hindrance in achieving litter free roads status.

From
this week, a vehicle belonging to the urban local body (ULB) will be
assigned to supervise all the 65 wards to penalise the offenders caught
red-handed while littering. The squad will also penalise shops if they
fail to place two bins each for biodegradable and non-biodegradable
waste in their establishments.

“A
sanitary officer will be on board the SWM squad vehicle to oversee
cleanliness of all four zones in civic body limits. The officer will be
equipped with spot fine enabled gadget, commercial establishments
including eateries will be focused as we have been receiving complaints
on them found dumping waste on roads,” corporation commissioner N
Ravichandran told TOI.

Unlike
monitoring and penalising only the residents and commercial entities,
the SWM squad will inspect the performance and cleaning activities of
fellow officials and sanitary workers as allegations were raised about
burning waste mounds along the roads in Karumandapam and Ponmalai
localities.