MCG to collect only segregated waste from November 21

Starting November 21, Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) will collect only segregated waste from households across the city, municipal officials said. Residents’ welfare associations (RWAs)s have been told to cooperate and ensure that residents do not mix waste in their dustbins.

The corporation has also issued directions to its sanitation wing and door-to-door waste collection concessionaire Ecogreen to make citizens aware of the change over the next 10 days and sensitise them on the need to segregate waste at home.

The officials said the decision was taken to ensure strict compliance with waste management rules and even after repeated attempts, people are still not segregating waste.

Civic body officials said waste should be segregated in three bins as biodegradable waste, dry waste and reject sanitary waste (medical waste). The segregated waste will be collected from homes in vehicles having separate compartments for the three and would be taken to the four waste transfer stations for processing.

MCG joint commissioner Naresh Kumar said they held a meeting on Friday and Saturday with their sanitation workers and the concessionaire and have directed the nearly 1,000 employees who collect waste from across the city to start spreading awareness among residents and to inform them to keep their dry and wet waste separate.

“We have received repeated complaints from many areas that residents get into tiffs when workers start asking them to segregate waste. We have adopted a new modus operandi and we have decided that after November 20, we will not collect mixed waste,” he said.

Since 2018, the MCG has announced more than six times that household waste has to be segregated, but compliance has remained lax, officials said.This time, however, the modus operandi is different and they will stop collecting waste of violators.

In 2021, too, MCG ran a campaign and set a deadline of November 10 but received poor response and the deadline was extended.

Kumar said many are ready to even pay a penalty but not segregate waste.

The joint commissioner said all supervisors have been asked to keep a check on staff movement and to ensure no one manhandles them. In case someone tried to do so, they will inform the police control room and strict action will be taken against the person.

The MCG has also issued a toll-free number — 18001801817 — for residents to lodge complaints or get more information on the process.

Rajkumar Yadav, president of Sector 46 residents’ welfare association, said they have circulated the message on their groups and have held meeting with residents on Saturday. “With the help of concessionaire, we will prepare a list of residents who are not segregating waste and they will be blacklisted after November 21. We will send three reminders and even after that if they do not follow the directions, their waste will not be picked,” he said.

Dhruv Bansal, spokesperson of the DLF Qutub Enclave resident welfare association (QERWA), said they are getting regular complaints from residents from DLF Phase 1,2 and 3 regarding collection of waste. Garbage is collected mostly by private vendors allowed by MCG and they don’t have compartmentalised vehicles for collection.

“The private vendors do not have proper infrastructure and they are avoiding the collection since past the 3-4 days so residents are disposing of it in at empty plots in the colony, we wrote to the MCG commissioner regarding this but till date, we haven’t heard anything about any steps been taken by MCG to make collection smooth,” he said.

Officials of Ecogreen Energy said they are prepared to collect segregated waste and have informed their staff that mixed waste should not be collected. “We are imposing zero tolerance towards mixed waste in Gurugram after November 20. At present, our focus is to minimise the load at Bandhwari landfill, and to achieve that, we are running six material recovery facilities in the city to ensure that only segregated wet waste is used for composting and dry waste gets recycled in an appropriate manner. Achieving 100% source segregation will ensure that city’s waste is handled in a decentralised and sustainable manner,” said Suvendu Samantaray, general manager, operations, Gurugram.

The civic body also plans to start penalising residents found dumping accumulated mixed waste in public spaces from later this month.