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| Tenders invited 6 months ago | | SWM work in Budgam yet to take off | | Early Times Report
Jammu, Feb 21: After undertaking a pilot project on solid waste management in 5 wards of Budgam town, the Directorate of Urban Local Bodies Kashmir (DULB) and Municipal Committee Budgam invited tenders for all the 13 wards of town almost 6 months ago, but the work as per sources has not been taken by the shortlisted agency till date.
Details available with Early Times reveal that in August 2017 Director ULB Kashmir invited tenders for undertaking solid waste management work in 13 wards of Budgam town after successfully undertaking door to door collection and source segregation plus processing of organic waste. After tenders were invited one NGO namely BM Waste Ventures was shortlisted by the Directorate of ULB Kashmir. "The NGO was supposed to start work by October 2017 , but after the Director got transferred new Director didn't agree to take up the work as according to him he had no resources to go ahead. He accordingly wrote to Govt to provide funds for the work and till date neither the funds were provided by Govt nor did the Directorate manage funds from other resources ," said an official in Directorate of ULB Kashmir.
The Govt of India and Solid Waste Rules 2016 are giving a thrust to Source Segregation of waste and Information Education and Communication (IEC) activities but the Directorate of ULB Kashmir and Jammu are not taking this very seriously said another official. Recently the Municipal Council (MC) Kathua has invited tenders for outsourcing solid waste management work but the tender document had not included two basic components for undertaking the work.
MC Kathua published a tender document in shape of Expression of Interest (EoI) in some local newspapers. MC Kathua wants to outsource street sweeping, drain cleaning and door to door waste collection work from residential and commercial areas. The document hardly mentions door to door collection by way of source segregation which is now mandated under Solid Waste Management Rules (SWM Rules 2016). In addition to it, there is no mention of IEC activities as well which is also mandated under SBM Rules of 2016 and guidelines of Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) Urban and Grameen.
Pertinently in order to make Source Segregation of waste a mass movement , the Government of J&K on the directions of Union Ministry of Urban Development had asked Jammu Municipal Corporation (JMC), Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC) , and all the Municipal Councils and Committees of Jammu & Kashmir under Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) to start collecting waste in a segregated form from individual households and business establishment from April 7th 2017 , but more than 10 have elapsed but this process is yet to be taken up by the civic bodies in Jammu & Kashmir. Budgam was the only town across state where the work on source segregation was started in November 2016 but it was stopped inspite of being a success. The work was retendered in August 2017 , but was not at all operationalized on ground. Sources say that 5 wards in Budgam where the work had been taken up in past are suffering a lot as segregation of waste is not being undertaken. |
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