Admitting that waste segregation at source level continues to pose a big challenge for the government, Telangana Minister for IT and Municipal Administration K. T. Rama Rao said that children can bring about the much-needed change.
Speaking at the National Waste Management Summit organised by a private firm elets and GHMC on Saturday, the Minister said that though they had distributed two bins to each household for free to segregate dry and wet waste and conducted educational programmes, the behavioural change among people is yet to come.
He instructed the GHMC officials to immediately partner with School Education Department to engage with school children on this subject.
School children
The Minister asked the City’s civic body to start the programme on a mission mode by distributing bins in government schools and educating the children on the need to segregate waste. The Minister also asked the GHMC to allot officers for every school and spread the programme to private schools in Hyderabad in the near future.
The waste generated by one crore people in the city is handled by only 20,000 sanitation workers, he said and appealed to the people to be participative and help the government to keep the city clean. Mr. Rao reminded that the competition of Hyderabad is no more with other Indian cities but with global destinations. He also hinted at bigger role for private players in managing the city waste by partnering with GHMC.
Learning experience
Participating in the summit were the top 20 municipal corporations of the country which fared better than Hyderabad in the recent Swachh Survekshan rankings.
GHMC Commissioner B Janardhan Reddy, said that summit was also a platform to help civic officials interact and adopt best practises locally based on the success stories.
The day-long event included panel discussions on various topics related to waste management and also presentations by representatives of municipal corporations.
On this occasion, elets also launched a special issue of their e-gov magazine on GHMC’s initiatives and campaigns.
