BBMP talks to RWAs on garbage, poll cards

Meet addresses concerns over plastic ban, waste segregation

December 16, 2012 08:46 am | Updated June 22, 2016 12:49 pm IST - Bangalore

BANGALORE : 10.10.2012:  Segregated garbage  on 10th September 2012. Photo: V SreenivasaMurthy

BANGALORE : 10.10.2012: Segregated garbage on 10th September 2012. Photo: V SreenivasaMurthy

It was an eventful day for the members of several residents’ welfare associations (RWAs) who attended the deliberations on solid waste management and problems with electoral rolls here on Saturday.

Organised by the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) and the Election Commission of India, the programme saw participants engaged in a discussion on segregation of waste and having an error-free electoral roll.

Mayor D. Venkatesh Murthy and BBMP Commissioner Rajneesh Goel addressed citizens’ concerns on solid waste management, particularly garbage segregation and non-implementation of the plastic ban despite several government orders.

Monthly meetings

Mr. Goel assured the citizens that monthly meetings would be held between BBMP officials and RWAs at the ward-level to address problems of waste disposal, water supply and other governance issues. Each ward would get a Facebook page and regular updates and contact information of contractors would be posted. This would help bring in greater transparency and accountability in urban governance.

Meenakshi Bharath, member of Solid Waste Management Round Table, urged citizens to segregate waste and compost organic wet waste.

The meeting also saw some fuming by apartment owners, who took exception to the BBMP categorising them as bulk waste generators. They reasoned that many of them had tie-ups with private firms to recycle dry waste. However, they sought the civic authority’s help in installing organic waste convertors on their premises.

Several residents also brought up the issue of vacant sites and playgrounds turning into dumping grounds for waste.

Holy cow!

The discussions threw up some offbeat solutions to tackle the garbage menace. One was to seek the services of cows.

Dr. Bharath said: “Rearing cows has its own benefits. On an average, a cow eats 35 kg of fodder a day. If the kitchen waste containing vegetables can be fed to them, a large amount of garbage generated at the household level can be reduced.”

Mr. Goel appeared to agree, and said the BBMP was contemplating diverting vegetable wastes to dairies instead of landfills. For this, the palike plans a tie-up with the dairies and the BBMP markets for the daily consumption of vegetable waste, and six major dairies had been identified so far, he said.

Electoral rolls

Anil Kumar Jha, Chief Electoral Officer, urged RWAs and civil society members to help the Election Commission have an error-free voter list.

“A draft list was published on December 10 and is now open for scrutiny and corrections. Door-to-door verification will be held from December 15 to 30; and here the RWAs can help us by checking the residuary voters’ lists (voters who don’t have EPIC), voters’ slips and deletion lists.”

Kathyayini Chamaraj from CIVIC said that registration applications must receive prompt acknowledgement from the authorities and measures need to be implemented to track these applications as they are processed.

BangaloreOne help

A press release said that 21 BangaloreOne centres across the city had been equipped to assist voters to register online, while voter facilitation centres and ward offices had also been made nodal points for election-related activities.

To register online, voters can log in to www.voterreg.kar.in while enrolment status could be checked by sending an SMS “kaepic <space> 10 character EPIC number” to 9243355223. A call centre (ph.: 1950) has also been set up to handle election-related complaints.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.