LEFT TO ROT: Uncleared garbage at the City Market in Bangalore on Sunday. — Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy

BANGALORE: With the private garbage contractors pressing for designated dumping yards, residents of most areas in the city had to put up with unbearable stench as tonnes of waste piled up at various places on Sunday.

With the contractors stopping garbage transportation on Friday, 293 lorries laden with garbage have lined up all over the city.

While Friday's waste of 1,800 tonnes is rotting in the lorries, more than 3,600 tonnes of garbage generated on Saturday and Sunday have not been lifted from the areas cleaned by the private contractors.

Unable to meet the demand, the civic body on Sunday even flouted the Municipal Solid Waste guidelines (issued by the Supreme Court's Solid Waste Management Committee) and asked the contractors to coordinate with villagers and farmers to dispose of the accumulated waste.

This direction by the Joint Commissioner (Health) B.V. Kulkarni violates the guidelines as the Supreme Court had directed all metros in the country to set up scientific landfills by December 31, 2003, sources said.

Letter

The Joint Commissioner wrote to the zonal health officials on Sunday to direct the contractors to transport some of the accumulated waste to Mavallipura and the Karnataka Compost Development Corporation (KCDC) plant in Bommanahalli.

"The rest can be transported to the dumping places in coordination with the villagers and farmers," the letter states.

But the private contractors said they could not take the risk of convincing the villagers to allow dumping on their land. "Though we knew it was illegal, we managed to carry it on so far by paying the villagers for every load. The BBMP had promised to provide dumping yards every time we raised the issue. But nothing has been done so far. We are helpless now and want the civic body to allot dumping places for us," general secretary of the Bangalore Mahanagara Swachate Lorry Maalikara Mattu Guttigedarara Sangha S. Balasubramaniam said.

Though a BBMP press release said that the contractors had been directed to dispose of the accumulated waste in Mavallipura and Bommanahalli, Mr. Balasubramaniam said the contractors did not get any communication from the civic body.

Meeting

With the situation likely to deteriorate on Monday, Health and Family Welfare Minister R. Ashok has called a meeting of the contractors and officials on Monday. "We will apprise the Minister of our problems and urge him to resolve the issue," he added.

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