Garbage collection stops in Bengaluru south

The garbage nightmare has come back to haunt some parts of the city. With residents near Bingipura landfill preventing trucks from dumping garbage, the sight of heaps of garbage lying uncleared in Bengaluru south and Bommanahalli is back. The residents have locked up the entry to the landfill after a fire was noticed about four days ago. This has had a cascading effect on the city’s solid waste management with officials estimating that about 600 tonnes of garbage, loaded in trucks, are waiting to be processed while several hundred tonnes are to be cleared from the streets. Several of these garbage-laden trucks are parked on the city’s roads. "Garbage has not been picked up for the past two days and is lying in a pile near our house. I hope the situation this time is not as bad as two years back," said Papiya Neogi, a resident of Jayanagar. However, the anger among residents is very evident. Narayana, a resident of Bingipura, said, “There is a fire because of the methane gas released by the garbage. It has been threatening our lives and so we locked the gates. The landfill services areas in the south zone of BBMP as well as Bommanahalli and received up to 900 tonnes of garbage a day from these areas. “The methane gas has sparked off a fire in some places. Pipes need to be installed in order to allow the methane to escape safely. We will start this work now,” said A.B. Hemachandra, Joint Commissioner (South Zone), BBMP. Search for alternative He acknowledged that garbage had not been collected for the past two and a half days in southern areas. “We are frantically searching for an alternative to dumping at Bingipura. Eventually, we have to stop dumping garbage there.” Mayor Manjunath Reddy, who was sworn in on Friday, said that he would visit the site on Sunday to take stock of the situation. ‘We are working on amenities’ Residents around Bingipura complain that the government and the BBMP are not doing enough to help them deal with the massive health issues raised by dumping of garbage in the vicinity of their homes. “They made some half-baked efforts to hold health check-up camps. We were promised a primary health centre, water purification plants and so many other amenities, including a community centre. Nothing has happened yet,” said Sardar, a local resident. Officials acknowledged that not much had been done. A.B. Hemachandra, Joint Commissioner (South Zone), BBMP said, “All of this work should have been completed by now but we are working towards it. Already, we have given mosquito nets and are providing tanker water. There are provisions for a health centre and reverse osmosis water plants.” -The Hindu