Solid waste collection fee by August : Coimbatore Corporation

As mandated under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission scheme

By August the Coimbatore Corporation will start levying the waste collection fee, as mandated under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission scheme.

Corporation Commissioner G. Latha told The Hindu that the civic body had started taking steps towards collecting the fee - it would table a resolution before the Council, get it approved and then have the same published in the district gazette.

The Corporation’s decision to levy the fee, which would be a percentage of the property tax, followed the measures it had taken to improve the door-to-door segregated collection of waste, rationalise the use of personnel and machinery and manage the use of vehicles for carrying waste.

Blue print

The measures were based on a blue print the Corporation had prepared for solid waste collection – each ward would have a route map that would clearly inform the residents how and when the door-to-door collection would take place.

The map would also be shared with the residents.

The Corporation had planned to have a push cart and two workers for every 300 houses.

This translated into 1,500 push carts for all the 100 wards. It would use the existing push carts and buy more, if necessary. The workers would dump the waste collected in bins at 600 locations across the city.

Bins

At each of the 600 locations there would a bin for dry waste and another for wet waste and those would be for use for only the workers. This would bring down the number of bins from 3,000 to 1,200 in the city, Ms. Latha said.

The removing of the bins was a crucial step for the Corporation, as it had found that the bins were the villains in the waste management system, which promoted dumping waste on the road.

The move would ensure that the dry, recyclable wastes get sorted out and sold locally, at the ward level. Only wet and dry, rejected and hazardous waste would reach the Vellalore dump yard.

This would also bring down the number of lorries and lorry trips to the Vellalore dump yard, thereby helping the Corporation save on fuels.

The door-to-door collection system would also apply to small commercial establishments. As for the big commercial establishments and restaurants, the Corporation had a separate arrangement, the Commissioner added.