Proliferation of gated communities and residential townships across the city vouch for the city’s potential as flourishing real estate destination.
What is lacking is the civic body’s resolve in implementation of solid waste management rules with regard to the group housing projects.
Six years after the Solid Waste Management Rules are framed, and four years after the Telangana State government announced its SWM Policy, no measures have been initiated to make the realtors and residential welfare societies fall in line.
As per the SWM Rules, all residential welfare associations and gated communities with an area bigger than 5,000 square metres should segregate waste at source, and hand over the recyclable material to either the authorised waste pickers/ recyclers/ urban local body.
Bio-degradable waste should be processed, treated and disposed of through composting or bio-methanation within the premises. Only residual waste, after all these processes are finished, is to be given to the waste collectors or agency.
Newly developing townships and group housing societies should develop in-house waste handling and process arrangements for bio-degradable waste.
The norms are rarely observed as visible from the ground level. Very few gated communities are equipped with compost units for treating the bio-degradable waste. While some have introduced segregation at source, for a large number, it is an alien concept.
“We put all the waste in plastic bags and leave it at the doorstep for the trash collector to take away in the Swachh Auto Tipper. There is no compose unit, nor any effort to liaison with recycling firms,” says R. Ramana Reddy, a flat owner from a complex of 300 flats in Musheerabad.
One more resident of a prestigious residential project in Manikonda confirmed that no compost unit is run in the premises.
“We throw only wet waste down the garbage chute. Weekly once, we keep the dry waste out at a predesignated point for collection by the recycling agency. Wet waste, however, is collected by GHMC vehicles, and not composted within the premises,” says Melly Maitreyi, the resident.
Though compost unit is mentioned as mandatory requirement for all the gated communities, it is hardly reckoned with by the local body while issuing occupancy certificates.
Builders state that mention of compost unit within the premises is a deterrence for the buyers. Officials, on the other hand, attribute the reluctance to non-availability of suitable machinery.
“We had campaigned for compost units with certain vigour a few years ago, by organising awareness workshops and exhibitions of composting machines for the bulk garbage generators. But we learnt later, that the manufacturers were not providing any maintenance for the composting equipment, and the machines ended up functioning only to 50 per cent of their capacity. This has been a major road block in pushing for the adherence to rules,” confided an official from the SWM wing of GHMC.
The officials are hands tied, as the machinery should be obtained only from manufacturers empanelled by the Swachh Bharat Mission of the Central government.
