Black dot repaving display is not very good in Mangaluru's solid waste management

Mangaluru

The roadside black dots in front of the busy KSRTC bus stall in Mangaluru greet tourists, showing the regretful state of solid waste management in coastal cities. Now, the black dots at the corner of Bejai-Kuntikana Road in front of the bus stalls mocked the Mangalore Municipal Corporation (MCC), which once won a series of awards to maintain the cleanliness of local bodies in Indian cities.

The black spots on the company's 60 wards have risen in the past year. “Citizens' agencies have identified 60 major black spots for installation of CCTV cameras to prevent people from dumping waste in public places,” said MCC Commissioner Ravicandra Naik.

Mangaluru has been proud of India's third place in the 476 cities surveyed by the Union Government. Citizens Agency won the “India's Best Urban Solid Waste Management Award” in 2018. Mangaluru is one of the 23 cities in the country that won the 2018 National Award. Later, it also won the Green Leaf Award and the Solid Waste Management Icon Best Solid Waste Management Award (SWM).

Health rankings decline

It is obvious that in the 2023 survey, Mangaluru's sanitation rating dropped sharply to the 253rd of the 446 cities in the country.

By the way, while the black spots were still rising under the call of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the citizen-driven Swachh Mangaluru Abhiyan was performed twice. If the first phase is held, the event will be held from January 30, 2015 to 2019. The second phase started for a year on October 1, 2023. The focus of the first phase is on cleaning the roads and surroundings. The second phase focuses on accessing the house and disposing of household waste appropriately through separation.

Mutt and campaign coordinator Ranjan Bellarpady told Hindu The first phase of the week is held on 200 Sundays and covers 2 million people hours. “The advocacy program on wet waste management reached 300,000 homes. In addition, the cleaning education gave 25,000 elementary school students. The mission also attracted 15,000 college students through the seminar,” he said.

Mr. Bellapadi added: “In the second phase of the event, approximately 53,000 kilograms of waste were removed from public places through 12 cleanliness drives (1 per month). The program brought together 4,426 volunteers who planted more than 1,400+ over 5,000 families throughout the city.

Despite the years that the mission and other volunteer organizations had many awareness programs before 2015, the Black Dot returned in the same location and in the new location.

Black dots in front of KSRTC bus booth. |Photo source: HS Manjunath

Isolation and backward

The commissioner accused the rise of black spots of being attributed to people who did not isolate the waste as wet, dry and sanitary. “When people don’t quarantine waste, company workers don’t lift mixed garbage from the door.

“Now, we have begun to impose penalties on non-separated waste, starting with hotels. It will expand to houses and other institutions,” the commissioner said. The commissioner hopes it will help curb the black spots. Each hotel found that there was no quarantine waste fine of Rs 5,000. He said citizen agencies have also started distributing printers, requiring people to isolate waste.

Bellarpady and Umanath Kotekar of Ambamaheshwari Seva Trust voluntarily monitored the waste segregation of Mangaladevi, Bolar and Hoige Bazar Wards, and the company's garbage collection vehicles have not collected Garbage from all regions since the end of 2023.

Kotekar added: “After the MCC switched from a contract-based SWM system to a self-management system six months ago, it had no supervisor to monitor DoorStep's waste collection. It had only eight health inspectors who could not actually monitor waste in all wards.”

But the commissioner insists that the company has not received complaints about the failure to lift the garbage.

Bellapadi disagreed with the agreement, and the office of Romakrishna Mutt received a call from people asking that the trash had not been lifted. “When Mutt was actively involved in cleaning the drive for about six years, people called it the office,” he said.

Black dots behind the Infosys building and near the office of Zilla Panchayat in Mangaluru Kottara. |Photo source: HS Manjunath

A rare initiative

Kotekar said that since December 2023, when the Trust stepped in to get better SWM, its volunteers visited 5,800 homes (including apartments) in three wards, raising awareness about waste isolation. Some RWAs do not allow volunteers to visit apartments.

“We found that about 500 houses did not isolate waste. People in these houses told us that even if the waste was isolated, the company was transported in mixed waste. On the other hand, company workers blamed people for not isolating waste. Blame games led to black people.”

He said all 500 homes isolated the waste after the trust fund intervention, adding that the trust even monitors waste isolation in randomly.

“The Mangaladevi, Bolar and Hoige Bazar wards now have no black spots, and there are no black spots in 90% of the range,” Kotekar said. He added that the trust has now extended its awareness drive to three other adjacent wards – Port, State and Attavar. “Our volunteer field trips have just begun to approach commercial organizations,” he said.

Kottara's Revanth said the company should collect dry waste at least four days a week to prevent people from dumping it in public places. Although the company claims to collect dry waste twice a week, it is actually collected only once a week in some places, such as Kottara, Urwa and Chilimbi. As people's lifestyles continue to change, and through attractive packaging from manufacturers and stores, production in all households increases in production in all households. Therefore, civic agencies should not provide scope for the accumulation of dry waste in the house.

In some cases, members of some volunteer organizations remain alert to the black spots, grab those who throw the waste there and return the waste to the houses and places that have been abandoned. The purpose is to prevent the dumping of waste in public places. However, the dumping continues.

Helpline search

To get the city out of black spots, Bellarpady said the company should open a helpline with a dedicated phone number, and people can call if the garbage is not collected or if the black spot is created.

A team must be formed to clean up the black spots immediately. The team will have to keep in touch with their respective wards, health inspectors and waste collection supervisors.

Kotekar said that if the company involves locals at the ward level to make people understand the needs of quarantine and carefully monitor collections, it can prevent the creation of black spots.

Cleared during the Swachh Mangaluru Abhiyan, the main black spot on the Yekkur National Highway 66, as well as attractions in other areas such as Bunder, in the old port of Kotical, near the Zilla Panchayat office in Kotchara, Kottara near Kottara office, reveals Swm of Mcc.