Rajamahendravaram: Preparations on for best utilisation of waste

Rajamahendravaram(East Godavari District): At last, the government is taking steps to utilise city garbage. The government has recently approved the establishment of a waste-to-energy plant in Vemagiri under Rajahmundry rural constituency. The centre will generate electricity from the wet and dry waste collected from all the 26 municipal areas of the erstwhile Ubhaya Godavari. If this centre comes into use, 1,100 tons of garbage will be required per day.

Preparations were made to start this plant ten years ago under the name of Yuvraj Power Plant. But was stalled even before starting due to various reasons.

This is expected to be restored now. It remains to be seen if the slogan 'Waste to Wealth/Waste to Energy' will be realised with this move or not.

For about a year, people not only separating household waste into wet and dry waste before handing it over to the municipal workers at their door steop but also paying user charges.

Since January 2022, each household in Rajahmundry has been paying garbage tax of Rs 90 per month. Traders are paying Rs 150 to Rs 400 per shop (depending on the level of the shop). In this way, every month in Rajamahendravaram city, more than Rs two crores of garbage user charges are collected. There is no official information on how much money is coming in from garbage tax and what is being done with it.

When the municipal officials were questioned about this, they said that the collection of garbage user charges as part of Swachh Bharat Yojana is still in the pilot programme stage and not being fully collected in all places. But at field level in all the wards of the city under the control of ward secretariats, the collection of user charges is going on.

The Municipal Corporation strategically removed dust bins in all wards from December last year to collect garbage tax. Similarly, the vehicles that transports dust bins in the dumping yard were also stopped. There are negative consequences due to the lack of dustbins on the streets.

As many as 95 mini vans have been purchased by the corporation to collect and transport garbage from house to house. Strangely, the corporation has been using them for about 10 months without even having registration numbers. Despite all this, the Corporation is unable to utilise even the garbage that people give in wet and dry categories.

All the garbage is being dumped together in the dumping yard. Due to this, neither electricity generation nor preparation of organic fertilisers was properly undertaken and measures to increase productivity have not been taken. Eight centres have been set up in Rajahmundry to make organic fertilisers from garbage.

Corporation sources said that five of these are non-functional and the remaining three are partially functional. Ten tonnes of waste including plastic generated daily from domestic, commercial and industrial sectors and the share of plastic was estimated at one tonne per day in 2014. The current amount of waste is estimated to have almost doubled. 60 MLD of sewage is coming daily through 444 km long drains in city limits.

Officials said that although there is a 30 MLD treatment plant in Ava area, it is not fully treating sewage and needs to be repaired. Sewage is being added to Godavari river without completely treated. Unfortunately, no recycling process is implemented while

plastic waste is also coming in large quantities. Since there are hundreds of hospitals in Rajamahendravaram, medical waste, and bio-waste is also coming in tons every day.

Electronic waste is already piling up. The most disturbing truth is that the process of scientifically disposing all this is not being implemented.

Experts said that turning waste into a productive resource can create wealth.

A retired employee from Anand Nagar V Rajamohan said that the Swachh Survekshan should be taken further by giving incentives to people, who contribute to wealth creation through garbage by separating household waste into wet and dry sections. He opined that it is unfortunate that the corporation collects user charges from the public.