Segregate waste or pay penalty, GCC tells residents

CHENNAI: Residents who fail to segregate their household waste into degradable and non-degradable will have to pay penalties as the Greater Chennai Corporation has started implementing Solid Waste Management Rules, 2019. During the last 15 days, the civic body fined 35 bulk waste generators and collected around Rs 1.5 lakh.

N Mahesan, Chief Engineer (Solid Waste Management) of Chennai Corporation said notices are being served to the residents who are failing to adhere. “If the residents fail to adhere to source segregation 15 days after the notices, Rs 100 will be imposed against individual households. For the apartment buildings, Rs 1,000 will be levied. Rs 5,000 will be levied against bulk waste generators,” he said.

In a statement, Gagandeep Singh Bedi, Chennai Corporation Commissioner, said as many as 35 bulk waste generators were found failing to source segregate their waste during inspections between April 21 and May 5. A total of Rs 1.49 lakh was collected from them.

Meanwhile, the civic body has instructed Urbaser Sumeet, a private consortium, that carries out conservancy operations in eight of the 15 zones, to provide details of the residents who fail to source segregate their waste, to conservancy inspectors concerned for taking further action.

Also, the drivers of battery-operated vehicles (BOV) will paste red stickers at the doors of the persons failing to segregate. The stickers request the residents to segregate their waste and to contact the drivers to know the timings of door-to-door waste collection. Green stickers will be pasted at the doors thanking the residents, who follow source segregation, for segregating their waste.

A GCC statement said garbage collected in the city is segregated in resource recovery centres (RRC) and wet waste converted into manure and bio-CNG and dry waste sent for recycling. Plastic waste is being sent to cement factories to be used as fuel. The Solid Waste Management Rules also mandate the civic body to collect user charges from the residents, which is also expected to be implemented.