Shanghai dream is load of rubbish

Three out of every four city households are not covered under BMC’s house-to-house garbage collection scheme.

Mumbai may be nursing dreams of becoming a world-class city but its municipal administration is faltering over providing basic services.

Three out of four households in the city are still not covered by the BMC house-to-house garbage collection scheme. This year the civic body missed its deadline to cover 60 per cent of household in the city under the scheme, said RR Markandey, BMC’s chief engineer for solid waste management. “We have covered about 24-25 per cent (households),” he said on Thursday.

This is less than half of the BMC’s target of 60 per cent coverage by March this year. As of now, only a few major roads in the city have been covered under the scheme.

The BMC’s rationale behind house-to-house collection is to benefit citizens and eliminate the need for the cement or metal community garbage containers on roadsides. The containers often overflow and spread garbage and disease. Also, the stink from the containers irritates motorists and people waiting at bus stops. They are also a visual blight on the cityscape, as Municipal Commissioner Johny Joseph had told DNA last year when the project was launched.

These objectives remain far from being achieved. The BMC blames its failure on the lack of civic sense of Mumbaikars, who, it says, are reluctant to segregate garbage. Markandey said many people still throw trash on the road, in the drains or anywhere, but the garbage container. But the civic body admits it doesn’t fine enough people for littering and non-segregation, though it has a regulation in effect from March making these offences illegal.

There is a fine of Rs100 for littering. Individual property occupants are fined Rs100 if their yards are dirty and societies Rs1,000. There are fines for other garbage-related offences too. BMC figures available with DNA show that municipal officials issued 12,086 fine tickets for garbage-related offences in June this year-that is to 0.008 per cent of the city’s population.

There are only 150 officials on the field handing out fine tickets. That works out to be only one official for every three square kilometre of area. “We don’t put emphasis on fining people,” Markandey said. “We focus on public awareness instead.” However, the BMC has not launched an ad campaign targeting garbage-related offences.