The Suchitwa Mission’s plan to bring junk dealers on a common platform to improve e-waste collection and its management in the city has lost steam with the majority of traditional scrap dealers keeping off it. Though the Mission authorities claim progress, hardly one third of the 600 dealers in the city favour the plan.
It was after several rounds of discussions with the leaders of various trade unions in 2015 that a common platform of junk dealers was planned.
It was aimed at offering them better field support along with job protection and gradually bringing them under a single umbrella to facilitate the Local Self-Government Department’s solid waste management programmes. But majority of scrap dealers suspect that the formation of a common platform was part of a hidden agenda to regulate them.
“We like to do the business independently and without the mediation of a third party. We don’t want to spare our meagre income and time in the name of such projects,” said Ashraf, a junk dealer on Cherootty road. The elderly man also said that no officer had met him within the past two years with a request to enrol in the scheme.
Meanwhile, the Mission authorities said the new platform was mooted with several beneficial schemes for junk dealers. The Mission had plans for setting up material recovery centres in all local panchayats to collect segregated plastic waste and e-waste, and the bulk resale of this stuff using scrap dealers’ network, they said.
An officer attached to the Mission said the project was designed to help junk dealers collect items from a common point instead of directly visiting large number of houses in a panchayat. There was also a plan to give them a separate amount as transportation charge to make the business more beneficial, he said.
In the wake of the cold response from the target group, the Mission is now planning online enrolment of beneficiaries.
