Municipal body may charge you for waste disposal

The municipal bodies in India can charge a fee for garbage collection from residents but will have to ensure its disposal in an environmental friendly manner, says a new draft rules circulated by the environment ministry.

Updated on: Sep 1, 2013, 23:52:02 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The municipal bodies in India can charge a fee for garbage collection from residents but will have to ensure its disposal in an environmental friendly manner, says a new draft rules circulated by the environment ministry.

The new rule, which aims to fight the growing menace of urban municipal waste, is likely to make the job of municipal bodies difficult. As per the Central Pollution Control Board report, around 1,27,486 tonne of municipal garbage is generated every day in 59 major cities of India and only 12.54% of its gets treated. The remaining either remains unlifted or is dumped in unscientifically manned landfill sites.

The Municipal Waste (Handling and Management Rules) 2013 for the first time specify norms for the landfill debarring municipal bodies from setting them up near residential colonies, wildlife and forest areas, religious, historical and spiritual places.

Each landfill site should have a waste processing facility or should be linked to one. There should be continuous monitoring of the groundwater and air quality at the sites, the rules say.

The draft norm also prescribes segregation of biodegradable and non-biodegradable components of the solid waste. It also says that the local bodies would collect horticulture, construction and dairy wastes separately and will not mix it with the solid waste.

The municipal bodies will have to set up special facilities for segregation of the waste, which is presently not done.

In addition, the bodies would be required to provide three waste bins — green for bio-degradable, white for recyclable and black for all other — in residential colonies to ensure that people dispose of their household waste in an environmental-friendly manner.

In return, the municipal body will have a right to charge a “service fee” from residents for transportation and disposal of the segregated waste.

To make the rules effective, the environment ministry wants the municipal bodies to incorporate the rules in its bye-laws.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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