Indiranagar residents fed up with uncleared garbage

Indiranagar residents fed up with uncleared garbage

Deepika Arwind

The accumulation of waste in the area attracts stray dogs

‘Collected garbage is dumped on the main road’

‘It is left for days on end before being taken away’

— Photo: K. Gopinathan

HAZARDOUS: Garbage has not been cleared from 9th A Main, Indiranagar, in Bangalore.

Bangalore: Every resident of Indiranagar seems to have one steady complaint — now a cause of discomfort and growing irritation — that of garbage collection and disposal.

With an organised set of 23 resident welfare associations meticulously covering all of the areas strung together with a Coordinating Committee of Residents Associations, residents of Indiranagar are still struggling to cope with the different aspects of the garbage disposal problem in the neighbourhood.

Members of almost all associations have a problem with the irregular collection of garbage.

G. Ramamoorthy, secretary, Coordinating Committee of Residents Associations, says, “Even when the garbage is collected, it is dumped on the main road sometimes.” The same complaint comes from members of the Domlur Phase 2 Association.

Residents of the LIC Colony in Jeevan Bima Nagar say that for them the main issue is not the collection of garbage but the fact that it is dumped on the border of the colony, the road connecting eighth cross and sixth main.

“There is a green part on this road which is not meant to be built upon and the garbage is left there for days together before it is taken to the landfill,” says S.S. Ranganathan, Secretary, LIC Colony Residents Association.

This is also where the Residents Initiative for a Safe Environment (RISE) had begun a composting plant. “We had employed six people who would go around with special carts separating wet garbage from non-biodegradable waste, and we used microbial worms instead of earthworms for composting,” says Mahadev, president of RISE.

After the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) handed over cleaning operations to a contractor, the composting plant was dismantled. The accumulation of garbage attracts stray dogs, which brings on another set of problems.

The contractor assigned by the BBMP, Balasubramaniam, says that as far as he is concerned his team of 481 people — out of which 300 are involved in sweeping — including those who drive the garbage collection vehicles, are on the job all the time. “I get positive feedback from the residents all the time,” he claims. He has deployed 25 autorickshaws, three compact tractors and six depot trucks for garbage collection.