At the compost pit close to the Tihar jail complex, the stench of decaying matter forces people to cover their nose, while the sight of scavenging dogs and cows pushes them away from the pavement and onto the main road into oncoming traffic.
Barely two months after Janakpuri South was declared the city’s first “model ward” for solid waste management on orders from the National Green Tribunal (NGT), residents are protesting the measures taken. The area comes under the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC).
Ward councillor BJP’s Veena Sharma is demanding that the two compost pits and the segregation centre be moved. “They smell very bad and attract scavenging birds, animals like cows, dogs and pigs, besides insects,” said Sharma. The locals say the situation worsens during rains.
Two of these facilities — a compost pit and segregation centre — are along the Tihar Jail side of the Dada Satram Mamtani Marg, and just 100 metres opposite to it are residential bungalows. The third facility, a compost pit, is at the crossing of Shri Radha Krishan Thakur Marg in the middle of a bustling market.
Restaurant owners at the market complain that customers don’t visit them anymore because of the stench from the pit and asked for the facility to be relocated.
A model ward is to be fully compliant with the Solid Waste Management by-laws of Delhi, 2018 where door-to-door collection of segregated waste and disposal at ward-level is mandatory.
Veena Sharma, who raised the issue at the SDMC Ward Committee meeting for West Zone, recently, said, “More than the happiness at my ward being chosen as a ‘model ward’, I feel angry and frustrated... I get almost a dozen calls daily from residents saying their flats are full of flies and stinking now. How can anyone live like this?” she asked.
Vijay Batra, General Secretary of the Resident Welfare Association (RWA) C5A Part II, said, “They sort the waste in the open. Their compost method is also unscientific. If you could just leave the organic waste rot in open pits for months and expect it to become manure, it could have happened at the landfills too.”
MG Verma, a resident, said waste was being segregated at source and being picked up from the doorstep. “But it should be taken to their (SDMC’s) Punjabi Bagh bio-methanation plant and not processed here,” he said.
Senior SDMC officers, however, said the criticism was unfair. “We are using bio-enzymes and sawdust to speed up compost process, but a bare minimum smell at the sites is natural,” said Rajeev Jain, Superintending Engineer, SDMC, who is managing the site.
Regarding scavenging animals, he said, “We are trying to deploy more staff, especially during early morning and evening hours, to drive away the animals.”
SDMC Commissioner Varsha Joshi said she is looking into the problem. “We are exploring all possible solutions,” she said.
Ravi Agarwal, director of NGO Toxic Links said the issue between locals and SDMC officials can be solved. “Since the municipalities have just started developing compost sites, it is natural for them to encounter such issues. Organic waste needs a lot of upturning for aeration and if they deploy staff to regularly do that, they will harvest manure without any smell,” he said.
First Published: Jul 23, 2019 03:09 IST
