The Chennai Corporation will strengthen the management of biomedical waste in the city shortly.
At a meeting attended by representatives of the Corporation, the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board and the Department of Environment among others, the Corporation was asked to improve scientific disposal of biomedical waste.
This constitutes over 2 per cent of municipal waste in Chennai. The civic body will soon take initiatives to address challenges such as the lack of training for staff of hospitals in segregation of such waste and colour coding for waste management.
It will also conduct a study on the existing challenges to bio-medical waste management in the city where 596 registered hospitals and 36 diagnostic laboratories generate lots of the biomedical waste.
Consultation with hospitals
A meeting with representatives of the hospitals and diagnostic laboratories will also facilitate better training for waste management.
All the provisions of the BioMedical Waste Rules are yet to be implemented because of challenges such as lack of capacity among generators, inadequate infrastructure and finance.
The civic body will identify various practical problems in the implementation of the rules at the local level.
The upgrade of the existing system for waste management would also involve strengthening of the facility, improvements to transportation infrastructure by providing better design waste transportation vehicles, and setting up of a waste tracking system.
