The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has started cracking down on residents who have been provided two separate-coloured bins for segregation of waste but are still resorting to littering the neighbourhood alleys and streets.
The member, mayor-in-council, overseeing KMC’s solid waste management (SWM) department, Debabrata Majumdar, said though the civic body had finished distribution of waste bins for segregation in 40% of the neighbourhoods in the city, the complaints about littering continued to pour in.
According to the civic plan, the KMC solid waste management department overseers have been asked to keep a watch on the neighbourhoods where the complaints are steadily going up. After watching for a couple of days, the overseers will impose spot fines on the residents found guilty.
“We have already started imposing spot fines on errant residents in areas where we have distributed waste bins and started segregation of waste. Contrary to following the segregation procedure, a section of the residents is throwing garbage on the roads,” said a KMC solid waste management department official.
The KMC official said the civic brass had asked to fine residents of several wards during the peak of a dengue outbreak last September for throwing garbage on vacant plots next to their houses. “Then we decided to intensify the drive in the neighbourhoods from where complaints of littering had been pouring in. However, one hurdle for our drive was getting witnesses to the offence. To overcome this problem, we may need to conduct sudden drives to catch an errant resident red-handed,” said a KMC official.
The official added that since September, the civic body had fined around 1,300 people across the city. The amount of fine varied from Rs 500 to Rs 1,500, depending on the gravity of the offence, the official added. According to a civic source, the KMC SWM department officials have reasons to feel worried about the littering habit in several north and central Kolkata neighbourhoods despite introducing a waste segregation system last December.
“We have been deploying extra manpower to collect garbage from the streets of Burrabazar, the Rajabazar-Sealdah-Narkeldanga belt, Cossipore, Dum Dum, parts of Bhowanipore, Hazra, Chetla and Tollygunge as a section of the residents throw their garbage on the streets after our waste collectors complete their job in the morning hours,” said a senior official of the KMC SWM department.
