Taking the IT route to tackle sanitation Premium

Waste to Energy Plant comes as a boon for the citizens of Visakhapatna; city sees significant improvement in the door-to-door garbage clearance, even as some issues are yet to be taken care of

Solid Waste Management has always been a subject of debate in the Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GVMC). Door-to-door garbage collection, debris clearance at public places, transporting and treating it has been top priority for the civic authorities, but still a large number of complaints keep flooding the complaint desk of the corporation.

The GVMC has recently adopted the IT route to tackle the issues pertaining to sanitation. A special cell with 24 employees was constituted at the Command & Operations Centre (COC) which remotely monitors the garbage clearance from the residential colonies, and its transfer to the dumping yard. All the garbage/sanitary vehicles were fitted with Global Positioning System (GPS) devices to track their movement. There is significant improvement in the door-to-door garbage clearance. However, there are a few issues that are yet to be taken care of.

A majority of the citizens point out to the non-clearance of dumper bins in the colonies, which is leading to sanitation issues. In some areas, the overflowing dumpbins spill wastes on to the road. Stray dogs pull out the wastes adding to the unhygienic conditions. Similarly, people also complain about non-clearance of drains in some areas.

“The door-to-door garbage collection has improved. The dumper bins arranged on the roads should, however, be cleared on time. Dumpbins in our locality including at Rajaka Veedhi and HB Colony are not cleared properly. There is a culture of organising weekly shandies in some areas of the city, including at HB Colony. Even after a couple of days after the shandy, the garbage dumps are not cleared,” said B.B. Ganesh, general secretary of Visakhapatnam Apartment Resident Welfare Association (VARWA)

GVMC Commissioner P. Raja Babu said there has been a significant improvement in the overall sanitary situation in the city after installing GPS to the garbage trucks and earmarking specified areas to the sanitation staff in the wards. Every day, the sanitary inspectors have to reach out to the COC and update once the garbage clearance was completed in the locality.

“The GVMC has a fleet of approximately 850 garbage collection vehicles and there is a need to monitor their movement constantly. With 600 CCTV cameras in the city, the staff in the COC monitor the garbage cleaning and sweeping activities during the nights,” he said.

Mr. Raja Babu said that a special taskforce team has been constituted in the GVMC which visits all the zones to check for garbage heaps, drain clearance and also underground drainage problems. If this plan works out, the number of teams is likely to be increased.