When will Dehradun’s garbage situation improve?

DEHRADUN: Despite numerous drives, court orders and outsourcing of garbage collection, heaps of garbage strewn all over are a common sight across the state capital, and the situation refuses to improve.
Spots like Subhash Road, Roadways workshop and the Rispana and Bindal areas see garbage scattered through most part of the day. As a result, these places are not only an eyesore but also pose major hygiene problems for residents.
Even though the city has its own segregation and composting plant at Sheeshambara, the Dehradun Municipal Corporation (DMC), by its own admission, is not able to transport around 40-50 metric tonnes of waste to the plant for processing.The waste, say officials, is left on city roads to be burnt or washed away into the Rispana or Bindal rivers.
“Before the waste is washed away, it keeps lying on city roads for weeks. Often, its stench become unbearable but the corporation doesn’t do anything. It is only after rains that it gets into drains and then ends up in either of the two rivers,” said Ramesh Kunjyal, a shop owner on Chakrata Road.
Taking note of the gravity of the garbage problem in Doon, the Uttarakhand high court had last year ordered the DMC to clear all garbage dumps in the city within a week. Though the officials scrambled to implement the order but just months later, the situation is back to what it used to be.
Officials as well as residents say that the lack of manpower and inadequate training to employees are the major reasons for the garbage mess in the city. Mahesh Bhandari, president of Residents Welfare Associations (RWA) of the city, said that though the corporation has outsourced the garbage collection to a Chennai-based company, the staff hired by the firm is not trained properly. “The staff members are new and most of them do not even know the areas properly. They visit the colonies only one or twice a week for picking up garbage and even then, their vehicles are mostly filled up already,” he said.
The segregation of waste is another problem. Forget e-waste, the corporation doesn’t even have a cohesive mechanism to implement source-level segregation of dry and wet waste. Despite clear guidelines mandating source level segregation, the garbage pick-up trucks are often found mixing up the waste. “The workers that come to collect the waste are not even aware of the difference between dry and wet waste. Also, the trucks have only one compartment and therefore the waste is bound to get mixed,” Bhandari said.
Meanwhile, municipal officials say that the corporation will soon be initiating training for the new staff members. “The company that has been brought in for waste collection is still using most of our equipment and vehicles for transporting the waste. However, soon they will be buying their own which will improve the situation,” said DMC health officer Kailash Joshi.
Joshi acknowledged that lack of manpower is an issue, adding that more people will soon be hired for the 40 new wards of the city. “We have passed several proposals in our board meeting and they will be implemented soon. These include buying new vehicles, hiring more people and issuing tenders to outsource garbage collection in the remaining 40 wards. Once these steps are taken, we will be able to fix the gaps.”