Mumbai: The city's ranking in the Swachh Survekshan this year dropped to the 29th spot from the 10th in 2016, but the civic administration does not seem to be making enough efforts to improve the same. For around a fortnight now, dry waste vehicles have not been servicing many localities in Mumbai. Residents said that they were taking efforts to segregate waste, but there were no vehicles coming to collect the dry waste. Several contracts for dry waste collection vehicles in the city have ended, but the BMC is yet to get new contractors in place. Maria D'souza, coordinator of the ALM 33 (Mount Mary-Kane Road, Bandra) said that there is a severe problem. "The junior officer in our ward has been helping us in getting the waste collected. There should have been adequate planning done and the BMC should not have waited till the time the contract expired," said D'souza. Bandra corporator Asif Zakeria said that he had been receiving several complaints from his locality of dry waste not being collected. "Dry waste collected occupies space and it cannot be left piling in such a manner for many days. The BMC needs to put its house in order before giving out notices to residents for segregation," said Zakeria. Many activists said that the purpose of the segregation excercise is getting defeated. "The dry waste collection vehicle has not been coming to our locality since the end of last month. There is no adequate interest and seriousness been shown in segregation of waste. With no vehicles, wet and dry waste gets mixed together," said Rajkumar Sharma from Chemur's Diamond Garden Residents Forum. Dry waste is collected from households in Mumbai and sent to 32 dry waste segregation centres. Many dry waste segregation centres employ rag-pickers who are involved in sorting. Once the sorting is done some items like plastic are shredded using the machines if the segregation centre has enough. However due to space constraints, the trash after it is sorted is sent to recyclers out of Mumbai. A senior civic official said, "The dry waste collection contracts were ideally to end in December but as we increased the number of trips the contracts lapsed earlier. We have started work to call for immediate tenders," said a civic official.

Read the original post:

Dry waste collection comes to a halt - Times of India