Patna: PMC to focus on waste management, sanitation to improve ranking

PATNA: Patna Municipal Corporation has chalked out a plan to improve its ranking in the next Swachh Survekshan survey, which is conducted annually by the Union ministry of housing and urban affairs (MoUHA) under the Swachh Bharat Mission.
This time, the civic body will put emphasis on waste management, segregation, sanitation and engagement of citizens, besides strengthening door-to-door garbage collection from households.A decision in this regard was taken after the poor performance of Patna city in the Swachh Survekshan report released on August 20.
PMC commissioner Himanshu Sharma said work has already started to reduce the overflowing legacy waste at landfill site in Bairiya Chak. “With the help of Bobcat vehicles, we have created small mounds of garbage of around 15 lakh metric tonnes. The bio-remediation process has also started. In this process, some chemicals will be sprayed to reduce the volume of the waste by 30-40%. It would continue for next couple of weeks,” he said.
Sharma added, “The next step is to segregate the legacy waste like plastic, metal and biodegradable materials with the help of dust trommel machines. It will be installed at Bairiya Chak by September 20 and all the waste will be segregated in six months.”
The civic body has decided to hire 10 dust trommel machines from private suppliers for segregation of legacy waste. The rate for one-tonne waste segregation is between Rs 300 and Rs 400.
The PMC has planned to give the segregated plastics and metals to the United Nations Development Programme’s plant or the registered recyclers of Bihar State Pollution Control Board. The soil will be used in land-filing and construction work.
The PMC boss said, “Once the landfill site is free from legacy waste, the area will undergo beautification on the same lines of Indore and Surat. Recently, some PMC officials had visited these two cities and learned their model of waste segregation.”
The PMC will start the transfer station at Gardanibagh within the next 15 days. The second station at Agamkuan would also be operational soon as 70% work has already been done.
Himanshu said with support from UNDP-Bihar, the civic body is sensitising the residents of Patliputra and Bankipore circles to keep wet and dry waste separately in green and blue bins. “This practice has become successful in several wards of the two circles. It will help the PMC segregate the garbage at Gardanibagh transfer station. Plastic waste will be given to the UNDP’s plant and organic waste will be transferred to the landfill site for compost,” he added.
The PMC has targeted to set up 23 organic waste compost plants in major vegetable and fruit ‘mandis’ across the city by October-end. The bidding process for the same has already been initiated.
The PMC has also asked hospitals to make arrangement for compost pit for the wet waste on their own. From September 30 onwards, the PMC will not collect wet waste from the hospitals.
Besides, the PMC has also decided to set up around 350 modular toilets in 36 slum areas by the end of this year.