Ghaziabad civic body to start penalising residents who do not segregate waste

The Ghaziabad municipal corporation will start a drive from March 4 to penalise households/establishments that fail to segregate daily solid waste at source. The state mission director (Swachh Bharat Mission) has also defined a penalty amount of 200 a month for the offence and officials said if residents fail to pay it, the amount will be added to the house tax bills.

According to the civic body, residents are supposed to segregate dry and wet waste before handing it over to the door-to-door collection agents. The penalty is 2,000 and 200 per instance for dumping of construction/debris waste and horticulture waste, respectively.

Further, a penalty of 750 a month will be imposed on those who spread meat/animal waste and ₹1,000 per week in case of a default by bulk waste generators such as residential high-rises and commercial establishments that generate over 50 kilos of waste per day.

“We initiated a campaign, “pray and persuade”, in February to spread awareness among the masses and requested them to segregate dry and wet waste at source. Now, we will start penalising offenders. The drive was supposed to continue till March 31 but the corporation has decided to continue it even after that. If residents fail to pay the penalty amount, it will be added to their house tax bills,” said Mithilesh Kumar, corporation’s city health officer.

For the purpose, the corporation has deployed eight nodal officers, five sanitary inspectors and 200 safai nayaks to impose penalties in the corporation’s five zones of Vasundhara, Mohan Nagar, Kavi Nagar, Vijay Nagar and City zone.

There are 385,000 households in the jurisdiction of the municipal corporation and city is now gearing up for 2023 edition of the “Swachh Survekshan (cleanliness survey)”.

From this year, additional weightage will be given to source segregation of waste, enhancement of waste processing capacity of cities to match waste generation and reduction in the waste reaching landfills. Ranking of wards within the cities is also being promoted.

“We are gearing up for Swachh Survekshan 2023 and identified two major improvement areas — door-to-door solid waste collection coverage and also source segregation of waste. The city generates about 1,200 metric tonnes of daily solid waste and about 45% is wet waste. The idea behind the drive is to collect the wet waste and process it easily. Otherwise, the mixed waste is very difficult to handle and process scientifically,” Kumar said.

Environmentalists said the city still lags when it comes to coverage of door-to-door waste collection among the 100 residential wards. According to officials, 463 vehicles cover about 70-80% wards currently.

“The levy of penalty is needed as it will inculcate discipline among residents. On the other hand, the corporation should enforce the rules strictly and increase resources for wider coverage,” said Akash Vashishtha, a city-based environmentalist and lawyer.