It is an indication of how indifferent a city can be to its sanitation and conservancy issues – hardly anyone seems aware that a strike has been going on for nearly a month now against privatisation of garbage collection in two wards of the city! The sequence of events has been predictable thus far – strike, sops from Government, forcible eviction and arrest, approaching of court, permission to protest but refusal to quash privatisation, etc. What is not featuring at all is the problem of urban waste itself, and its eventual disposal. The city and its Corporation are addressing only the symptoms and not the malaise.
That privatisation of garbage collection is a given should be clear by now. The ongoing protest only concerns two zones – Royapuram and Thiru Vi Ka Nagar. As many as 14 out of the 20 zones of the Corporation already have private collection ongoing and this trend is only likely to continue. Given this, and also considering that the privatisation plan has long been in place, the striking workers are on thin ground. The Corporation has already presented to the court that wages will be higher post-privatisation. But nobody seems to be addressing the bigger issue – namely, the generation of garbage and its disposal. This is a far bigger challenge. Privatisation by itself, while probably improving efficiency of collection and better monitoring owing to proper controls in place, will not be effective unless the monumental quantity of waste generated can be curtailed.
A report by the CMDA has this to say – “The Corporation of Chennai is the largest generator of solid waste. It has a network of transfer stations and two landfill sites at Kodungaiyur and Perungudi. The present system of collection, transfer and dumping does not make any distinction between types of waste other than domestic and commercial waste, and to some extent construction debris. The disposal of hospital waste and industrial waste is the responsibility of the generator but much of this waste also gets into the Corporation system. Separate system has not been established for e-waste so far.” It is now estimated that the city generates 6,000 metric tonnes of waste a day, though some estimates put the figure at double this.
In waste generation, as a city we are not alone. This is a worldwide phenomenon. But what we seem to be lacking in are steps to control the waste at source, followed by its effective segregation and eventual disposal. The scheme of door-to-door collection though in place, varies in standard, and the public bins in most locations – remain an indication that people are not putting together and holding on to their daily waste for collection at the doorstep. These overfull bins lead to proliferation of stray cattle and dogs as well – a topic that is forever in the news.
The next issue is that of awareness of segregation. While the Corporation launched its wet and dry bins schemes with much fanfare years ago, the ground reality is that residents, and this includes shops and establishments, do not follow this at all. The net result is that the garbage has to be segregated, if at all, by conservancy workers themselves. We are at this stage not even commenting on the eventual disposal of waste – Chennai still follows the outmoded system of landfills. This cannot change unless segregation of waste at source and a recycling culture is brought into force.
And so, while the strike of the conservancy workers and the ham-handed forcible removal of the protestors are all regrettable, long term dangers are our continued reliance on age old waste disposal methods. It is time we addressed this issue.