Chennai Hires Spanish Firm For Effective Solid Waste Management

A Spanish environmental management company, Urbaser-Sumeet, will take charge of waste management in seven zones in Chennai from October. The corporation will take over solid waste management in Valasaravakkam, Alandur, Adyar, Kodambakkam, Perungudi, Sholinganallur and Teynampet.

The company has introduced 36 key performance indicators which include sweeping of streets, clearing waste bins on time, 100 per cent door to door waste collection and creating awareness about waste segregation. A toll-free number will be provided to the residents to register their complaints at the centre throughout the day.

Mahmood Sait, CEO of Urbeser-Sumeet, has said that the corporation will set up a control room in Alandur and will have separate teams for each zone reported, The Times of India. "Everything will be monitored through a GPS system and zonal teams would monitor the route maps of battery-operated vehicles, trucks and compactor bins," he added.

Residents may be penalized for not handing over segregated waste. However, the penalties are yet to be finalized. With this step, there would be more accountability, mechanization and tech-based monitoring the company said. All the pushcarts will be replaced by battery vehicles and every street will have separate bins for dumping wet, dry and hazardous waste.

Chief minister Edapaddi K Palaniswami will be inaugurating the project on Wednesday. However the residents are concerned over the fact that civic bodies have not created enough facilities for the management of waste collected, hence all the waste would end up in the dump yards and the situation would remain the same as before.

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