New garbage bins, don’t trash Kolkata’s London dreams
Mamata Banerjee’s dream to transform Kolkata into London through cleanliness is set to gather momentum with the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) authorities deciding to place around 10,000 trash bins across the city’s roadsides.
Mamata Banerjee’s dream to transform Kolkata into London through cleanliness is set to gather momentum with the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) authorities deciding to place around 10,000 trash bins across the city’s roadsides.
“We have decided to place trash bins across the length and breadth of the city only to ensure a clean Kolkata,” the member, mayor-in-council (solid waste management) Debabrata Majumder said.
A primary survey of the city found that around 10,000 trash bins would be required at strategic points on roadsides for pedestrians to keep the city clean.
According to officials attached with the project, KMC had already placed 350 fibreglass bins in few localities as pilot project. “We have placed this new variety of 200 trash bins in Park Street, Theatre Road, Camac Street, Dalhousie Square, parts of Chowringhee and Loudon Street,” a senior civic technocrat said.
Moreover, another 150 bins had been placed at strategic locations on DL Khan Road and Harish Mukherjee Road, covering the whole of Kalighat area, where the chief minister stays.
“Each fibreglass trash bin costs around Rs 4,000 to Rs 4,500 and we have already ordered another 300 tailor-made bins,” the MMiC said. According to civic technocrats attached to the pilot project, the idea is to place such trash bins at a standard distance of 200 metres in residential areas and 150 metres at commercial places with hawkers.
“The requirement of 10,000 bins are only for the core city areas and does not include places in the outskirts,” a civic engineer said.
The capacity of these fibreglass trash bins is 240 litres, which is four times more than the existing ones.
Since the bins would be costly, the civic body plans to appeal to companies like ITC, Coal India, Vodafone and Airtel for funds to implement the project.
During the Left regime, a similar effort was undertaken and twin buckets with iron covers had been installed at strategic points.But with time, the buckets disappeared but the iron structure still stands in an ill-maintained condition.