Advisory Board discusses new solid waste management policy

Hyderabad : The first meeting of the State Level Advisory Board for Monitoring and Implementing Solid Waste Management Rules held today at Secretariat discussed the preparation of state policy and solid waste management strategy and implementation of the provisions of the solid waste management rules.

Municipal Administration Secretary Navin Mittal, who chaired the meeting, felt that there is lot of scope for improvement in solid waste collection in urban areas in the State. He said that, the solid waste management policy to be formulated by the state should lay emphasis on waste reduction, reuse, recycling, recovery and optimum utilization of various components of solid waste. The policy should also provide broad guidelines regarding integration of informal waste collectors in the waste management system, he added. The Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI) would be entrusted with the job of preparing the solid waste management rules of the state.

Officials informed that apart from GHMC, 26 Urban Local Bodies are processing limited quantities of the waste into compost and about 30 Urban Local Bodies have dry resource collection centres. Lack of suitable place for setting up compost plant, shortage of staff, lack of knowledge and expertise and non availability of vehicles are some of the reasons attributed for the poor performance of some of the urban local bodies. Municipal Commissioners of Siddipet and Bhongir who are members of the advisory board suggested that registration of waste pickers should be done to ensure proper collection of waste.