Trash disposal drive

Bireswar Banerjee, TT, Siliguri, May 26: The Siliguri Municipal Corporation councillor in charge of the conservancy department today visited the civic rubbish dump and asked workers engaged for collecting and disposing trash to improve waste management in town.
The visit by Mukul Sengupta, the member mayor-in-council (conservancy and solid waste management), to the dump has come at a time mayor Asok Bhattacharya and minister Gautam Deb are trying to outwit each other in imposing a ban on plastic carry bags in the SMC area.

After inspecting the 28-acre dumping ground, off the Eastern Bypass, Sengupta said it was not possible for the civic body alone to impose the ban on plastic unless the state government played a positive role. 

“The civic body alone cannot impose the ban on the use of plastic carry bags in the town. We will have to take a decision on the matter at a board meeting of the SMC. Simultaneously, the state government needs to play a positive role in enforcing the ban,” Sengupta said at the SMC office this afternoon. 

“From June 5 (World Environment Day), the SMC will conduct a number of programmes urging people not to use plastic carry bags.” 

In the course of the campaign, the MMIC said, the residents would be apprised of the solid waste management system run by the civic body and asked to refrain from dumping waste in open. 

“Indiscriminate disposal of waste is leading to air pollution in different localities. The drains, rivulets and even the Mahananda river are getting clogged. We have already passed on instructions to workers and officials of the conservancy and solid waste management department to see that garbage is collected from all the wards on a regular basis and disposed of at the dumping ground properly,” Sengupta said. 

He was accompanied by Arabinda Ghosh, the Independent councillor of ward 15, and officials of his department, during the visit to the dumping ground. 

Every day, the conservancy department of the SMC collects around 3.5 tonnes of waste. 

“We visited the area and will focus on the possibility of recycling the waste. Our priority will be the full-fledged implementation of solid waste management in all the wards and regular door-to-door collection of trash,” Sengupta said.

North Bengal development minister Gautam Deb today said a public hearing on the ban on plastic carry bags would be held in the first week of July at Dinabandhu Mancha in Siliguri.

The National Green Tribunal had asked the state government last year to conduct the public hearing on the ban on plastic carry bags in Siliguri and the surrounding areas.