The council of the Mangaluru City Corporation in its meeting here on Wednesday decided that solid waste from three outside urban local bodies and 15 gram panchayats will not be received at its compost plant at Pachchanady after three months.
It decided that solid waste from those civic bodies, including Ullal City Municipality, Bantwal Town Municipality, Kotekar Town Panchayat and 15 gram panchayats, should be accepted at Pachchanady till the next three months only, if those bodies sent segregated waste.
The council decided to write to them to pay their solid waste processing fee due to be paid to the corporation for long.
Raising the solid waste management issue at the landfill site of the corporation at Pachchanady, Leader of the Opposition Congress Abdul Rauf wanted to know what action had been taken by the corporation against officials who, according to him, were responsible for the garbage slip at the landfill site in August 2019 affecting many families and farmland.
Reacting to this, a BJP councillor Sudhir Shetty Kannur said that there was no point in blaming the officials for it as civic bodies located outside Mangaluru have been sending their garbage to Pachchanady for a decade thus, contributing for the increase in garbage at the landfill site. This arrangement should be controlled, he added.
Mr. Shetty said that as those civic bodies received grants from the government, they should make their own arrangements for processing solid waste generated in their jurisdiction. They should be responsible for disposing of waste generated by them.
Seeking a total ban on solid waste being received at Pachchanady from outside civic bodies, the former Mayor and Congress councillor M. Shashidhar Hegde urged the council to pass a resolution. Mr. Rauf urged Mayor Diwakar to give a ruling banning receiving solid waste from outside.
The Mayor and Commissioner of the corporation Akshy Sridhar said that the corporation cannot impose a total ban with immediate effect. Those bodies should be given some time, at least three months, to make alternative arrangements to process their waste. Till then, only segregated waste should be accepted at Pachchanady.
The corporation Commissioner told the council that in the case of garbage slip, the High Court of Karnataka has not passed any order to initiate action against officials on the ground that they were responsible for it. It has asked the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board to reply in the matter, he said.
