Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) Commissioner V. Umashankar has said that residents’ welfare associations were free to segregate and compost waste at their level, but any financial incentives for this would now no longer be provided by the civic body since a private company had taken up integrated waste management of the city.
RWA conclave
He was speaking at the annual RWA conclave organised by Gurgaon First, a non-government organisation, and the MCG on Saturday. He also informed that the training and the rehabilitation of rag-pickers was part of the company's responsibility under the contract.
He added that the contract with the company was only for solid waste and not for e-waste, biomedical waste or Construction & Demolition waste. He expressed helplessness about not being able to handle C&D waste on account of the National Green Tribunal stay for the upcoming facility for C&D management.
About 120 delegates from across a cross-section of RWAs in Gurugram came together for the conclave. The conclave talked about issues relating to RWA empowerment, progressive solutions that RWAs can undertake in the areas of solar, water and waste management.
The workshop had three sessions. The first session was on solar energy where speakers talked about roadblocks in solar installation in common areas and individual households. Haryana has a progressive solar policy and Gurugram gets very good solar radiation but only 18.5 MW solar rooftop panels are installed in the city. It was observed that RWA officials still had a number of information gaps and apprehensions with respect to solar power.
The second session was on water and waste management. In the third session, Deen Mohammad Khan, horticulture officer of Gurugram, talked about organic farming.
