New rules for waste management soon

Indian cities would have to install proper municipal waste management systems within a limited timeframe, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Apr 9, 2008, 01:11:48 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

Indian cities would have to install proper municipal waste management systems within a limited timeframe. The environment ministry will make an amendment in the regulations to this effect.

Ministry’s secretary Meena Gupta said the government would soon announce amendments to the municipal solid waste management regulations, which will lay down effective and practicable guidelines and timeframes for waste management.

The ministry has completed the consultation process with different stakeholders on the new approach required to clean Indian cities. “We are in the process of finalising the amendments. The amendments will begin a paradigm shift in solid waste management,” she said.

In most cities in India, solid waste management means dumping it in the landfill sites. According to a recent study, only about 50 per cent of garbage is daily lifted from urban centers in India, thereby signifying the poor state of affairs in the municipal bodies. Lifting garbage is a primary responsibility of municipal bodies.

According to ministry sources, the government is looking at effective Public Private Partnership models for municipal waste management where the waste can be recycled to produce compost or electricity. Delhi has already worked on these lines and some other cities like Mumbai is working, the official said.

Gupta, speaking at a seminar on waste management at FICCI, said the government realises the importance of engaging the private sector in waste management operations. “Sustainable waste management is a concept that can materialise only if service delivery is linked to private sector,” she said.

Former environment secretary Prodipto Ghosh sought viable PPP models for operation of hazardous and non-hazardous waste on payment of user fees. He also wanted legal recognition to informal sector involved in collection and recycling of waste.

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

Check India news real-time updates, latest news on Hindustan Times and more across India.