Eight years on, civic agencies still struggling to streamline waste management

NEW DELHI: Almost eight years after the erstwhile Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) outsourced waste management, the civic agencies are still struggling to streamline the system. From installing GPS in trucks carrying waste to uploading pictures of dhalaos online, they have tried everything but without any results.
Poor monitoring, lack of infrastructure, accountability and awareness, and multiplicity of authorities are prime reasons for the failure of all the schemes introduced by the civic bodies ever since waste management was privatized in 2005.Private concessionaires claim they didn't get the "desired" assistance from these agencies. "The first P (Public) in PPP is missing in the project. It is only the private party's responsibility to implement the project. For the success of door-to-door collections, waste segregation at source and awareness among people was crucial. But the civic agency didn't do much,'' said Abhay Ranjan, collection and transportation head, Ramky.
Officials admit it has been a one-sided partnership. Also, the civic agencies have done little to create awareness about the need for effective waste management. "Till now, we have left everything to the private concessionaire. The fact that it is a PPP project means the civic agency has some responsibilities,'' said Manish Gupta, commissioner, South Delhi Municipal Corporation. They have now floated fresh tenders under which the civic agency will be responsible for creating awareness. "We will hire a consultant for developing information education communication material and planning programmes to create awareness. The material will be printed by us, but workshops in residential colonies will be organized by the private concessionaire," said Gupta.
In 2009, the erstwhile MCD started door-to-door waste collection in two zones - Rohini and Civil Lines. It outsourced the project for effective implementation. The scheme was to be subsequently implemented in other zones but it never happened. At present, private concessionaires are responsible for lifting waste from the dhalaos and dumping it at the landfill site, which are maintained by the civic agencies. The civic agencies still manage waste collection in colonies and at landfill sites. "Multiplicity of authorities and lack of coordination between all the players is responsible for poor implementation of the scheme. In case of a problem at the landfill site, we are not able to lift the entire waste from dhalaos and we are penalized for it,'' said Ranjan.
While the south and north corporations are struggling to streamline the system, the east corporation has made considerable improvement. Post-trifurcation, it has streamlined its collection system by improving surveillance. "Earlier, we used to collect 1400 metric tonnes of waste. Now, it has increased to over 2000 metric tonnes. We have improved monitoring of vehicles by installing GPS," said Sanjay Surjan, chairman of standing committee, east Delhi.
But all corporations admit they have not focused on creating awareness. Experts believe waste management in Delhi is oriented towards generating more and as a result land-filling more. "Private parties are not concerned about what is going to the landfill or what is at the dhalao, simply because they get paid as per the weight of garbage. They don't encourage segregation because they prefer more weight. Had the corporations involved the waste pickers from the informal sector, they would have taken out every bit of the recyclables which is about 20% and ensured segregation. We think the system has failed completely," said Chitra Mukherjee, manager, advocacy and outreach at Chintan, an NGO that is working with NDMC on involving the informal sector in collecting waste.
Chitra said the corporation's awareness building efforts failed because they neither incentivized segregation, nor penalized non-segregation. "The policy should be to make it mandatory. Otherwise nobody cares," she said.
In fact, most big cities have failed in dealing with dhalaos and unsustainable landfills. A few municipalities are taking baby steps now. Anjor Bhaskar, a research scholar with Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) who is studying the benefits of decentralizing waste management, cites the example of Pune Municipal Corporation. In association with NGOs and waste pickers, it is working on a 'zero waste ward'. The ward, called Katraj, lies in the south of the city and consists of a population of nearly 10,000 households. The municipality set up a bio-methanation plant to convert organic waste into biogas within the ward. Waste pickers are engaged to collect segregated wet waste from households and are provided a sorting shed where they are able to sit and sort through the day's collection.