Garbage collection: Civic body to add another fleet of 700 battery-operated vehicles
A single battery-operated vehicle can replace five to six diesel-run ones
KOLKATA: In a major boost to the door-to-door collection of garbage across the city, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) will add another 700 battery-operated vehicles before the Durga Puja.
“We are in the advanced stage of tendering and we are hopeful of awarding a work order for procurement of these vehicles within a short time,” Debabrata Majumder, Member Mayor-in-Council (Solid Waste Management ) said.
Presently, KMC has 500 battery-operated vehicles in its fleet of door-to-door garbage collection.
According to sources, a single battery-operated vehicle can replace 5 to 6 dieselrun vehicles.
The introduction of these vehicles will also add to the efficiency of garbage collection as it will take much less
time for these vehicles to travel door-to-door.
There are presently 6000 diesel-run vehicles in the city used for the collection and disposal of garbage.
KMC has plans to gradually phase out all the diesel-operated vehicles used for the collection
of garbage.
The SWM department is gradually working towards introducing segregation at source phase-wise in all the 144 wards in the city.
The civic body has started segregation at source in 27 wards including Mayor Firhad
Hakim’s ward 82 in Chetla.
Each household in these wards has been given two buckets — white and green.
Discarded items made of paper, rubber, plastic, glass, wood, iron, and different metal products should be kept in the white one while cooked or uncooked food, fish scales, egg shells, vegetable waste, and parts of flowers or fruits should be disposed of in the green one.
The green ones are collected daily while the white ones are collected every alternate day.
About 4400 metric tonnes of solid waste is generated daily in the KMC jurisdictional area and the bulk of it is dumped at Dhapa.
Majumdar said that KMC is coming up with a construction and demolition waste processing at Patharghata in New Town which will be completed within a few months.