Ghaziabad: The Ghaziabad municipal corporation has planned to incentivise residents and the corporation’s staff in order to better manage the source-segregation of solid waste generated daily in the city. Officials said that starting December, they will be rolling out an app-based solid waste collection system which will keep track of dry and wet waste handed over to the corporation’s door-to-door collection vehicles, and the points collected by households can be redeemed in the way of rebate in house-tax.
At present, the city generates about 850-1,000 metric tonnes of solid waste and a majority of it is collected from residential areas with the help of about 200 door-to-door collection vehicles, which do so every day in the morning in 100 residential wards.
However, residents have also complained that they cannot get alerts about the exact timing of the arrival of door-to-door collection vehicles and even if vehicles arrive, they tend to move along fast and residents sometimes are unable to handover the garbage.
“Such problems were indicated by residents during the daily meeting which we hold in residential wards. To overcome all these issues, and more importantly the source segregation of daily solid waste, we are getting an app developed. With the help of this app, the staff of the collection vehicle will be able to keep track of households which handover segregated dry and wet waste. Further, for this work, we will also provide additional incentives to staff deployed in the vehicles,” said MS Tanwar, municipal commissioner.
The civic agency has planned that they will provide incentives to the driver and the support-staff of the vehicle for each kilogram of segregated waste they collect from residential localities.
The city at present has about 3.3 lakh households which pay house tax while it is officially estimated that the total number of households under the civic agency’s jurisdiction could be about five lakhs.
“With the help of the app, the vehicle staff will record which households have handed over segregated waste. Further, the residents will also be able to download the app and they can set alerts which will let them know the specific timing when the vehicle will come to the locality. We will also define the exact route for the collection vehicles,” Tanwar added.
“On a daily basis, the vehicle staff will make entries in the app and this will give certain points to households who handover segregated waste. When the residents pay house tax, they can seek to redeem the points collected through the app in the form of rebate in house tax,” he added.
The officials have planned the rollout of the app-based system from December and have planned to fully implement it across the city in the next six months. They added that the segregated waste collected will be taken to different sites for processing or manufacturing purposes.
For the purpose of start of the app-based system and rebate in house-tax, a proposal will be taken to the corporation’s board for required approvals and the modalities are getting prepared for the new system, said officials.
