Innovative 'waste' utilization

Corporators and officials have been going on study tours to other States and also abroad now and then to acquaint themselves with conditions there and implement here some of the useful features for improving amenities. There was criticism that most of those jaunts ended up as pleasure trips.

The present Municipal Commissioner, Mr. G S Panda Das, visited Sweden to study the way garbage was disposed there. From what he had said soon after returning, it was clear that he had made a detailed study of the very serious problem and returned with enriched ideas of how to go about it in handling Vijayawada's garbage problem.

What is good for a small country like Sweden may not be feasible here to the same extent but it would serve as a guiding factor to deal with the vexing problem under the conditions obtaining here. Vijayawada is growing in all directions and the open spaces for dumping the collected garbage are dwindling.

There are protests also from the neighborhood areas, and they are perfectly within their rights for demanding a pollution-free atmosphere. Excel plant for disposal of garbage has gone out of order and the measures to reopen the plant have to be taken immediately before embarking on other scientific methods in conformity with the standards achieved in other countries, particularly Sweden, the forerunner in this effort doing very well for the past four decades since 1970.

Mr Das has Herculean task before him in the coming years as he will have to work along with corporators to be elected shortly who might pull in different directions depending upon their parties. Three commissioners have been transferred from here within a short period and the government will do well to keep him here for some time till he completes the job of garbage clearance on the lines adopted successfully in countries like Sweden. His expertise on the subject can be utilized at other places in the State subsequently.

Why Sweden? As reported in The Hans India some time ago, Sweden imports garbage from a neighbouring country, Norway. "Sweden, a recycling happy land where a quarter of a million homes are powered by the 'incineration of waste', is facing a unique dilemma. The nation has run out of much-needed fuel, garbage. This is the cause the clean Scandinavian nation of more than 9.5 million has run out of garbage.

"It has been forced to import trash from neighbouring Norway. Sweden is so trash-strapped that it is shipping in 80,000 tons of refuse annually." So, with citizens not generating enough burnable waste to power the incinerators, the country has been forced to import it from Norway.

"Norway pays Sweden to take its excess waste; Sweden burns it for heat and electricity and ashes, filled with highly-polluting dioxins which are returned to Norway and land filled," says Catarina Ostlund, senior advisor for the Swedish environmental protection agency. Vijayawada city generates waste, enough and to spare, and but for the distance from here to Sweden, we could probably export much of it and solve many of our other problems!

Telangana � round the corner? What has happened to the Justice Srikrishna Committee report released on December 31, 2010? Does anyone remember it now? It was believed that a very comprehensive report on the thorny issue would come out and that there would be finality on its basis, but it all ended leaving everyone where they were till then, disappointed. It is now more than 30 months and the solution to the problem till now has eluded.

Various other developments in the State and at the national level seem to point out to the inevitability of a solution shortly. The BJP president, on his recent visit to Hyderabad, made it clear that Telangana formation was one of the party's main issues for the ensuing election.

That has been the policy of that party from the beginning, and with the formation of three new States under their regime it was expected that here also the new State would be formed. But with Chandrababu Naidu supporting BJP at the Centre, it was deferred by them to help him.

They even advanced elections by eight months because of him under the wrong impression that he would win on a sympathy factor as there was an attempt on his life. It proved to them to be a costly mistake and now Naidu, to win minority votes, has repeatedly said that his support for the BJP then was a mistake. He went about in his 'walkathon' promising everything to everybody, even donning Muslim caps and promising them 15 per cent seats and special package and so on when he came back to power.

Poll surveys point out that the BJP has very bright chances of coming back to power at the Centre whatever be the stand of Naidu, Nitish Kumar and his ilk; and then Telangana will be formed as their first priority. Whoever likes it or not, that seems to be the reality and the shape of things to come. Seemandhra people also will do well to read this writing on the wall and reconcile themselves to the inevitable outcome and plan for developing their own State which has been neglected by Naidu when in power, lavishing all his resources on Hyderabad city.

It is not far off when he will have to face the consequences for his acts of commission and omission and rue the decision on which he pinned all his hopes for the future, including the highest office in the country, if the Third Front comes to power!

Seemandhra people also will do well to read this writing on the wall and reconcile themselves to the inevitable outcome and plan for developing their own State which has been neglected by Naidu when in power, lavishing all his resources on Hyderabad city