Waste woes in silver city

Cuttack, April 16: The silver city’s garbage collection and disposal system is in a mess.
The solid waste generation volume in the city has shot up from being less than 100 metric tonnes to 500 metric tonnes in the past decade.
But the Cuttack Municipal Corporation manages to collect less than 60 per cent of it and dump them in as many as 62 locations along fringes, while a larger load is disposed into the Mahanadi river bed.
With the piling up garbage, public disdain has multiplied.
Orissa High Court, after a recent PIL on the matter, fixed April 30 as the deadline to stop the haphazard disposal system.
“Efforts are on to bring down the number of the garbage dumping locations to five by the end of this month. Later, we plan to shift to a single-point dumping yard,” said mayor Nibedita Pradhan.
“The dumping yard would be located at Chakradharpur in Barang block, 15km to the south of the city, where 30 acres have been allotted by the government for this purpose,” the mayor added.
But chances of the single-point dumping-yard being complete by the end of this month appear slim due to a delay in preparation of a detailed project report (DPR) regarding the move. Civic authorities, however, said that work on the DPR was on.
According to official reports, Cuttack, with a population of over seven lakh and spread over an area of 133.9sqkm, experiences a high volume of waste disposal from 800 hotels and restaurants, 25 hospitals and primary health centres.
More than 100 nursing homes, 106 slum pockets, over 3,000 industrial and commercial units, 635 offices and institutions, six cinemas, 23 parks, 1,23,174 households and over 2,000 cowsheds contribute to the city’s waste.
OUR CORRESPONDENT
The telegraph; Thursday , April 17 , 2008