Over 120 apartment complexes in the city have failed to install their own waste treatment facilities, in violation of building permit conditions.
The units continue to violate the law despite repeated reminders from the Kochi Corporation and are depending on the collection system of the local body.
While issuing permits to the apartment complexes, the local body insists that each complex have its own waste processing facility to process the waste at its source.
Of the 477 flats in the central city area, nearly 350 had installed the facilities and were processing the waste at source, said T.K. Ashraf, chairman of the health standing committee of the corporation.
Minister for Urban Affairs Manjalamkuzhi Ali had recently asked local bodies to stop collecting waste from apartments as they were supposed to have made arrangements for processing it on their premises.
The Kochi Corporation will soon issue an ultimatum to the erring apartment units. A meeting of builders and residents’ associations of these units will be convened to discuss the issue.
The local body would stop collecting refuse from the units after the cut-off date, Mr. Ashraf said.
The local body had earlier run a campaign, in Clean City movement of the Confederation of Real Estate Developers’ Associations of India (Credai) Kochi Chapter, association with the to make Kochi the first city in the country to have 100 per cent waste processing facilities in all apartment complexes. However, Mr. Ashraf admitted that the drive had lost steam.
The residents of apartment complexes who subscribe to eco-friendly, economic and self-reliant waste processing mechanism could join the campaign, said Jose Joseph Moonjeli, executive director of CREDAI Clean City movement.
A bio-bin priced at Rs. 60,000 and provided by the organisation is sufficient to process refuse from 40 residential units in a complex. One worker is sufficient to operate the unit. The workers, who would be available between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. in each complex, would collect the segregated garbage and processes it in the bio-bins. The residents would have to meet the monthly salary of the worker which would work out to be Rs. 6,500, said Mr. Moonjeli.
