‘Chennai crime rate low as women wear full clothes’
Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Babulal Gaur believes the crime rate in Chennai is less because women wear “full clothes” and are religious. The octogenarian minister recently visited the city to understand how the police commissioner system functions since there is a demand to introduce it in his state.
“Vaha mahilaen pure kapde pehenti hai, sari ho chahe salawar (Women wear full clothes there; be it a sari or a salwar),” the former CM said while inaugurating a police station in Bhopal.
Gaur added that the crime rate in Chennai was low because people there are religious and sport a tika on their forehead. Congress leader Priya Thakur slammed Gaur’s comments, saying it amounted to blaming women in MP for crimes against them.
Congress vice-president Manak Agrawal said, “Different states have different cultural, social and geographic conditions. Drawing such comparisons amounts to ignorance.” He added that women were free to dress how they want.
India seeks Saudi investment in petrochemical sectors
This was emphasized by Finance Minister P Chidambaram in his 2-day visit to Saudi Arabia during which he met Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and also interacted with the representatives of the business community.
Abdulaziz Al Saud, who is the Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister, would visit India next month along with a delegation of businessman, said a Finance Ministry statement.
"He urged Saudi business to invest in infrastructure and petrochemical projects in India," the statement said.
Citing opportunities in India, Chidambaram said Saudi businessmen can look for investment in projects like Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC); OPaL Petrochemical Complex, Gujarat, petrochemical complex at Mangalore, IOCL's LNG project in Tamil Nadu, Paradip Refinery of IOCL and Kochi Petrochemical Project of BPCL.
The Minister was in Riyadh to participate in the 10th India-Saudi Arabia Joint Commission Meeting (JCM).
During the meeting of JCM, Chidambaram and Saudi Commerce & Industry Minister Taqfiq Al-Rabia called for strengthening of cooperation in accordance with the Delhi Declaration and Riyadh Declaration.
Sooraj Pancholi charged with abetting Jiah Khan suicide
Rabya alleged that Sooraj had assaulted Jiah in December 2012 and in March 2013 as well.
In the chargesheet filed by the Juhu police, actor Sooraj Pancholi has been charged with abetting the suicide of actress girlfriend Jiah Khan based on an alleged physical confrontation between the two on the day before her death on June 3, 2013, a break-up bouquet that he sent her. The notes in which Jiah referred to her tumultuous relationship and frustration over her career, have been taken as her suicide note.
The 44-page chargesheet filed before a metropolitan magistrate’s court in Andheri on January 16 has statements of 36 witnesses, which include a fruit vendor and vada pav stall owner in Juhu, family friend Anju Mahendroo and a stylist known to Jiah.
Actor Salman Khan’s name also appears in the chargesheet. In her statement, Jiah’s mother Rabya Khan alleged that Sooraj’s father Aditya Pancholi had approached the actor to ‘counsel’ him. Aditya was allegedly not happy that his son was close to Jiah, who was elder to him.
Sooraj, in his statement, has hinted that Jiah was an attention seeker. He narrated an episode that occurred around 26 days before the suicide, when Jiah came to his residence visibly disturbed and told him that her mother Rabya had scolded her and hit her as she had missed a flight to Kolkata. According to Sooraj, Rabya told him that Jiah was just seeking attention.
The chargesheet also includes a statement of a Dr Rahul Dutta, who claims that Jiah had been seeking treatment for depression from him since 2008. He has stated that he administered hypnosis therapy to Jiah and that she had previously attempted suicide.
While dismissing Rabya’s claims that Jiah had been murdered, the chargesheet includes her supplementary statement, saying that Jiah was in a good mood on the day she died and there was no inclination of depression.
The police have also included a detailed summary of Rabya’s allegation. The actor’s mother has cited Jiah’s aversion to knots, and said that Jiah would have been able to tie a perfect knot with a muslin dupatta, with which she was found hanging. She has also questioned why a person attempting suicide would change into nightclothes, remove her makeup, close all the doors and windows of her room.
In a second panchnama conducted in her home in October 2013, the police found a bloodstain on the mattress on which Jiah rested her head and another one on the bedsheet. Rabya has said the bedsheet had been washed but the stain was still visible. Among injury marks on Jiah’s body that Rabya alleged the police took no congnizance of is a bruise of her left upper arm, as if someone had forcibly caught her. In her final observation, Rabya has noted that the ligature marks on Jiah’s neck are downward,‘which is in consonance with strangulation and not mere hanging by suicide,’ reads her statement.
The police have included the preliminary forensics probe and final postmortem report in the chargesheet, which terms the death unnatural due to “asphyxiation”.
Rabya’s lawyer Dinesh Tiwari said they will file a petition in the Bombay High Court seeking transfer of the probe to Special Investigation Team or CBI.
Two model co-ordinators arrested from Mumbai
The Hyderabad police, which is probing the case of a dancer who was gangraped after being given a spiked drink, have arrested two model co-ordinators from Mumbai. The duo, identified as Happy D’souza and Ajay Sharma alias Ali, have been booked under several sections of IPC and Criminal Amendment Act, 2013.
With these two booked, police have arrested five persons including three Hyderabad residents identified as Venkan Raju, a milk supplier, Ravi, garage mechanic, and Hari Krishna, supervisor at the milk depot in connection with the case.
According to the victim’s statement, she woke up in a luxury bus on January 2 and realised she was wearing her clothes inside-out. She had also found a bus ticket in her coat pocket.
The woman had gone to Hyderabad on New Year’s eve for a dance performance, for which she was to receive a payment of Rs 1 lakh. On her arrival there, she was taken to a hotel, 30 minutes from the airport, by her co-ordinators. She can only recall being given fruit juice and has a faint recollection of being assaulted by five men.
The woman had told police that one of the rapists was mute. The Hyderabad police tracked the accused based on the calls the victim had received. Hyderabad police said Raju allegedly confessed that he contacted a commercial sex worker for a woman who could give him and his accomplices a “good time”. The sex worker put him in touch with model co-ordinator D’Souza. D’Souza and Ali then got in touch with another model co-ordinator who proposed the woman’s name. “Through a nexus of model co-ordinators, the woman was brought to Hyderabad under the pretext of a show,” said D Raju, deputy commissioner of police (Hyderabad).
Happy and Ali received the woman at the airport. She was then allegedly drugged and raped by the five. Police found out that D’Souza did not utter a word in fear that the woman would identify his voice as he had spoke to her over the phone. This led the woman into believing he was mute.
“We have asked the Mumbai police to probe if this is a part of a bigger racket, “ said D Raju, deputy commissioner of police (Hyderabad).
Navi Mumbai airport tender on Feb 5
Mumbai: City of garbage hits a dead end
The dumping ground at Deonar.
In 2011-12, Mumbai alone accounted for 6.11% of the total waste generated daily in India. As its waste piles up, the
land-starved city is staring at the big question — where to dump? Our reporters look at options.
Of the 1,27,486 tonnes of waste generated daily in India in 2011-12, Mumbai alone accounted for 6.11 per cent. It is estimated that every resident in the metropolis now generates about 630 grams of waste daily, a figure that is expected to touch 1 kg in the coming years. Land-starved that the city is, this leaves its planners with an extremely difficult choice — where to dump?
The predicament, coupled with concerns for high-level emissions of greenhouse gases from the city’s unsanitary landfills and the growth of bacteria that cause life-threatening diseases, has fuelled the prospects of the waste management industry, which has yet to firmly establish itself in India. Estimates suggest that the Rs 60,000-crore industry has the potential to grow at 10-15 per cent a year. Foretelling the latent possibilities of this business, Dr Amiya Sahu, president of National Solid Waste Association of India (NSWAI) and member of the Planning Commission’s task force for Solid Waste Management (SWM), says, “Garbage is money, if handled properly.”
While the quantum of garbage generated by the city is only expected to increase, the infrastructure necessary to manage it is still not in place. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has ambitious plans to process and manage the 7,000-8,000 metric tonnes (MT) of waste generated daily. But since the formulation of the Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) Rules (management and handling) in 2000, most of these ideas have either failed to take off the drawing board or are poorly implemented today.
CURRENT SITUATION
Environmentalists believe the BMC’s current policies are in violation of MSW Rules, 2000, as the corporation allows compactor trucks to collect mixed waste and fails to penalise buildings that do not segregate waste. In February last year, a circular issued by deputy municipal commissioner (SWM) Prakash Patil stated that by July 2013, the corporation would stop accepting mixed waste and issue legal notices to housing societies that fail to segregate waste at the source.
The big announcement, however, fell flat as the corporation failed to provide vehicles for collecting dry waste from housing societies. Since last year, the corporation has been working on a long-term plan to ensure 100 per cent segregation by March 2015. The plan has yet to be finalised.
“Segregation was widely successful between 1997 and 2004, where the civic body roped in ALMs to encourage composting in an effort to decentralise waste management. But the current policy, of awarding centralised contracts to private companies running compactor trucks and paying a tipping fee to private contractor (the case in Kanjurmarg) for every tonne of waste accepted at the dumpyard, reverses the previous successful policies,” Rishi Aggarwal, a research fellow with Observer Research Foundation, says adding that the civic body has failed to make residents a partner in solid waste management, but has put its faith in private parties to manage waste.
Questions have been repeatedly raised over the quality of service provided by the contractors in collection and transportation of waste. Critics say while the BMC has an elaborate system in place for collection and transportation of waste, there are no real-time checks in place to see if the appointed contractors are following specifications. In a major health hazard, conservancy workers involved in collection, transportation and disposal continue to work
without wearing the prescribed rubber gloves, face masks, reflector jackets and safety shoes.
In a bid to introduce remote real-time monitoring of the system, the civic body is now working with global analytical company CRISIL to develop a software that will facilitate checks with minimum dependence on on-site employees. “We are working on removing the human element in the monitoring of all services. Instead of assigning officers to inspect the work, it will be monitored from the offices through live feeds,” says Patil.
The initiative is part of the civic body’s attempt to comply with standards set by the Ministry of Urban Development’s (MoUD) for urban local bodies to enhance the quality of civic amenities. Apart from effective garbage collection, the civic body will also have to ensure 80 per cent recovery of collected waste through recycling, 100 per cent scientific disposal of municipal solid waste, 100 per cent cost recovery in SWM services and 90 per cent efficiency in collection of SWM charges.
Starting with collection, Dr Sahu says, BMC should first provide the necessary infrastructure to encourage segregation. “If BMC wants to increase segregation of waste, it will first have to invest in more dust bins for Mumbai. Different dust bins for different types of waste should be provided so that residents are publicly educated to segregate wet waste from paper, plastic, glass and metal. Even the community waste bins today are overflowing and unsanitary. If they are better designed, we can use these effectively,” says Dr Sahu.
In early 2013, the corporation had announced plans to acquire 20,000 waste bins that would promote segregation. However, so far, it is yet to float a tender.
While BMC anticipates an increase in the amount of waste generated over the next 20 years, its SWM department claims that through these plans for segregation and waste-processing, the amount of waste that reaches the city’s three dumping grounds (currently 7000-8000 MT) will be limited to less than 10,000 MT.
According to Dr Sahu, the corporation would be better able to achieve this if it invested in built-in shredders for dry waste vehicles travelling to dumping grounds. “The amount of dry waste that is actually transported to the dumping grounds is half of the vehicle’s carrying capacity. It is an absolute waste of fuel and space. If the corporation uses vehicles with built-in shredders, fewer trips will be needed and more waste can be transported, thus saving up on fuel costs and other related expenses,” he says.
DUMPING GROUNDS
Mumbai’s three dumping grounds in question are Deonar, Mulund and the recently created Kanjurmarg landfill. The Kanjurmarg dumping ground has been stuck in litigation in the Bombay High Court as environmental organisations including the Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority (MCZMA) have alleged illegal dumping on wetlands and coastal regulatory zone (CRZ) areas that fall within the landfill site’s area of 141 hectares.
Deonar, along with Mulund landfill, was slated for closure five years ago in 2009. On account of the legal complications with Kanjurmarg, Deonar continues to be overburdened with the bulk of the city’s garbage (5,500 MT) being dumped here.
Moreover, while the height of the waste tower at Deonar has reached about 55 metres, as against the 35-metre cap mandated by the Airports Authority of India, none of the dumping grounds have a single waste processing unit despite Mumbai’s high generation of waste.
In a futile exercise, the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) has served the two landfills notices for failing to comply with the standards set by MSW Rules, 2000. In fact, for the Mulund landfill, MPCB’s sub-regional officer V N Patil has even submitted a proposal for the forfeiture of BMC’s bank guarantee for non-compliance of MSW rules.
“We plan to set up a biomethanation plant at Mulund dumping ground, but we are currently in the process of terminating the contract with its landfill manager. Once the process is over, we will float tenders for setting up the plant there,” a civic official said.
The official added that to ensure the pressure on landfills does not increase drastically, waste-processing plants at transfer stations and composting sites at civic markets and gardens in each of Mumbai’s 24 wards have been planned in the forthcoming Development Plan.
“This can later be used as manure for plants in the area. This will also reduce the pressure on the eastern suburbs, which is currently where all of the city’s landfills are located. Even the debris that is mixed with the MSW can be reused for construction material,” the official said.
Activists, however, feel the corporation should engage itself more closely with the landfill management activities.
Dr Sahu says, “In the long run, the city would benefit better from waste management if the municipality itself owned the plants. In foreign countries such as Sweden and France, where waste-processing technologies are successfully carried out in a big way, the municipality owns the plant. Only if the corporation is in control of these establishments will it understand the nuances of waste management in a city.”
Till these plans take off, Kanjurmarg is the city’s only landfill where construction of a bio-reactor is already under way. Still, Dr Sahu contends that the waste-processing technology does not do much for the garbage that will collect at the landfill site.
“A bio-reactor at Kanjurmarg would merely make the dumping ground a secure landfill as mandated by the 2000 MSW Rules as it is also located away from habitation. The bio-reactor basically ensures the methanisation of bio-degradable waste for fuel purposes. But it does not specifically process waste for energy. Moreover, on account of the terrain of the land which is mainly marshy in nature, effective fuel generation from waste cannot be carried out,” says Dr Sahu. He suggests that for increased production of methane, the corporation could mix sewerage sludge with the wet waste as it will generate better results for producing energy.
THE ROAD AHEAD
Recently, in 2013, the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) brought out a draft revision of the 2000 rules which, though yet to be gazetted, focus on incineration as a method of processing and disposing waste. Encouraged by this, BMC has floated an expression of interest (EOI) to set up a 1000-tonne waste-to-energy (W2E) incineration plant at Deonar. While the EOI received tremendous response with 22 international firms participating in the bids, there is no proof of successful implementation of this processing method in India to date, despite several attempts in various states including the national capital.
“So far, incineration plants only burn waste and have failed to convert this into energy. The plant at Vijayawada in Andhra Pradhesh was the first to be set up, and it has now closed down. Similar plants in Hyderabad and Lucknow have also been shut. In Delhi, there was a plant set up by a Danish company that eventually failed. Another incineration plant set up there by the Jindal group too has run into problems as it does not have a proper cleaning system, leading to a lot of smoke generation while processing through the furnace,” says Dr Sahu.
Dr Sahu recommends the diversification of waste processing technologies. “If we have different types of waste processors, we can effectively handle different compositions of waste coming from different parts of the city as the demographics in Mumbai are highly varied. We should have a combination of technologies including incineration, pyrolysis, gasification, and biomethanisation,” he says.
Offering another solution to decrease the amount of waste reaching the landfill, Aggarwal suggests financial incentives for conscientious citizenry to promote segregation at the source.”Instead of paying the contractors for accepting waste at landfills, property tax rebates should be given to buildings that generate minimal garbage and segregate waste,” said Aggarwal.
In an example of minimal amount of waste reaching landfills, 95 per cent of the waste generated from the construction of Chhatraparti Shivaji International Airport terminal T2 was will be reused at the site for levelling and filling purposes. “Some of the waste material such as steel and cement blocks has been sold to vendors and dealers. Meanwhile, the waste material that cannot be reused or sold has been donated for use in other sites,” said M Anand, principal counsellor, Indian Green Building Council, the agency which rated the structure for its green design.
The journey from doorstep to landfill
* Every housing society appoints a garbage collector to carry out door-to-door collection. The collected waste is then handed over to the municipal corporation’s garbage collection vehicles.
* Garbage transportation vehicles begin their journey every day at 7 am when they report to Motor Loader (ML) Chowks of each ward. At the chowk, every vehicle’s attendance is recorded and the collectors are handed tools and equipment for collection along with a log sheet of various garbage collection points for the day.
* There are 3,751 collection points in the city. As per the MSW Rules of 2000, the collection equipment must include face masks, rubber gloves, reflector jackets and safety shoes, though conservancy workers in Mumbai are invariably seen without these tools.
* Garbage is collected from slum areas through community-based organisations (CBOs) under the slum adoption scheme (Swachcha Mumbai Prabodhan Abhiyan). The CBOs deposit the waste into the civic body’s 5800 community waste bins stationed at various points across Mumbai.
* According to the civic SWM department, one tempo travels to each ward daily to collect dry waste, which is then sold off to recycling agencies.
*The ward checkpoints, SWM employees verify if the vehicles are filled to the brim. Smaller collection vans are dispatched to transfer stations where the garbage is loaded into bigger vehicles and transported to the dumping grounds.
*Currently, waste is only transported to Deonar (5,500 metric tonnes daily) and Mulund (2000 to 3000 metric tonnes). Bigger collection vehicles such as compactors and hook leaf containers are sent directly to the dump yards, where authorities weigh the vehicles and log in the their attendance. The vehicles wait in a queue and are let into the grounds in a single file to offload the waste at the designated spot.
Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Babulal Gaur believes the crime rate in Chennai is less because women wear “full clothes” and are religious. The octogenarian minister recently visited the city to understand how the police commissioner system functions since there is a demand to introduce it in his state.
“Vaha mahilaen pure kapde pehenti hai, sari ho chahe salawar (Women wear full clothes there; be it a sari or a salwar),” the former CM said while inaugurating a police station in Bhopal.
Gaur added that the crime rate in Chennai was low because people there are religious and sport a tika on their forehead. Congress leader Priya Thakur slammed Gaur’s comments, saying it amounted to blaming women in MP for crimes against them.
Congress vice-president Manak Agrawal said, “Different states have different cultural, social and geographic conditions. Drawing such comparisons amounts to ignorance.” He added that women were free to dress how they want.
India seeks Saudi investment in petrochemical sectors
This was emphasized by Finance Minister P Chidambaram in his 2-day visit to Saudi Arabia during which he met Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and also interacted with the representatives of the business community.
Abdulaziz Al Saud, who is the Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister, would visit India next month along with a delegation of businessman, said a Finance Ministry statement.
"He urged Saudi business to invest in infrastructure and petrochemical projects in India," the statement said.
Citing opportunities in India, Chidambaram said Saudi businessmen can look for investment in projects like Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC); OPaL Petrochemical Complex, Gujarat, petrochemical complex at Mangalore, IOCL's LNG project in Tamil Nadu, Paradip Refinery of IOCL and Kochi Petrochemical Project of BPCL.
The Minister was in Riyadh to participate in the 10th India-Saudi Arabia Joint Commission Meeting (JCM).
During the meeting of JCM, Chidambaram and Saudi Commerce & Industry Minister Taqfiq Al-Rabia called for strengthening of cooperation in accordance with the Delhi Declaration and Riyadh Declaration.
Sooraj Pancholi charged with abetting Jiah Khan suicide
Rabya alleged that Sooraj had assaulted Jiah in December 2012 and in March 2013 as well.
In the chargesheet filed by the Juhu police, actor Sooraj Pancholi has been charged with abetting the suicide of actress girlfriend Jiah Khan based on an alleged physical confrontation between the two on the day before her death on June 3, 2013, a break-up bouquet that he sent her. The notes in which Jiah referred to her tumultuous relationship and frustration over her career, have been taken as her suicide note.
The 44-page chargesheet filed before a metropolitan magistrate’s court in Andheri on January 16 has statements of 36 witnesses, which include a fruit vendor and vada pav stall owner in Juhu, family friend Anju Mahendroo and a stylist known to Jiah.
Actor Salman Khan’s name also appears in the chargesheet. In her statement, Jiah’s mother Rabya Khan alleged that Sooraj’s father Aditya Pancholi had approached the actor to ‘counsel’ him. Aditya was allegedly not happy that his son was close to Jiah, who was elder to him.
Sooraj, in his statement, has hinted that Jiah was an attention seeker. He narrated an episode that occurred around 26 days before the suicide, when Jiah came to his residence visibly disturbed and told him that her mother Rabya had scolded her and hit her as she had missed a flight to Kolkata. According to Sooraj, Rabya told him that Jiah was just seeking attention.
The chargesheet also includes a statement of a Dr Rahul Dutta, who claims that Jiah had been seeking treatment for depression from him since 2008. He has stated that he administered hypnosis therapy to Jiah and that she had previously attempted suicide.
While dismissing Rabya’s claims that Jiah had been murdered, the chargesheet includes her supplementary statement, saying that Jiah was in a good mood on the day she died and there was no inclination of depression.
The police have also included a detailed summary of Rabya’s allegation. The actor’s mother has cited Jiah’s aversion to knots, and said that Jiah would have been able to tie a perfect knot with a muslin dupatta, with which she was found hanging. She has also questioned why a person attempting suicide would change into nightclothes, remove her makeup, close all the doors and windows of her room.
In a second panchnama conducted in her home in October 2013, the police found a bloodstain on the mattress on which Jiah rested her head and another one on the bedsheet. Rabya has said the bedsheet had been washed but the stain was still visible. Among injury marks on Jiah’s body that Rabya alleged the police took no congnizance of is a bruise of her left upper arm, as if someone had forcibly caught her. In her final observation, Rabya has noted that the ligature marks on Jiah’s neck are downward,‘which is in consonance with strangulation and not mere hanging by suicide,’ reads her statement.
The police have included the preliminary forensics probe and final postmortem report in the chargesheet, which terms the death unnatural due to “asphyxiation”.
Rabya’s lawyer Dinesh Tiwari said they will file a petition in the Bombay High Court seeking transfer of the probe to Special Investigation Team or CBI.
Two model co-ordinators arrested from Mumbai
The Hyderabad police, which is probing the case of a dancer who was gangraped after being given a spiked drink, have arrested two model co-ordinators from Mumbai. The duo, identified as Happy D’souza and Ajay Sharma alias Ali, have been booked under several sections of IPC and Criminal Amendment Act, 2013.
With these two booked, police have arrested five persons including three Hyderabad residents identified as Venkan Raju, a milk supplier, Ravi, garage mechanic, and Hari Krishna, supervisor at the milk depot in connection with the case.
According to the victim’s statement, she woke up in a luxury bus on January 2 and realised she was wearing her clothes inside-out. She had also found a bus ticket in her coat pocket.
The woman had gone to Hyderabad on New Year’s eve for a dance performance, for which she was to receive a payment of Rs 1 lakh. On her arrival there, she was taken to a hotel, 30 minutes from the airport, by her co-ordinators. She can only recall being given fruit juice and has a faint recollection of being assaulted by five men.
The woman had told police that one of the rapists was mute. The Hyderabad police tracked the accused based on the calls the victim had received. Hyderabad police said Raju allegedly confessed that he contacted a commercial sex worker for a woman who could give him and his accomplices a “good time”. The sex worker put him in touch with model co-ordinator D’Souza. D’Souza and Ali then got in touch with another model co-ordinator who proposed the woman’s name. “Through a nexus of model co-ordinators, the woman was brought to Hyderabad under the pretext of a show,” said D Raju, deputy commissioner of police (Hyderabad).
Happy and Ali received the woman at the airport. She was then allegedly drugged and raped by the five. Police found out that D’Souza did not utter a word in fear that the woman would identify his voice as he had spoke to her over the phone. This led the woman into believing he was mute.
“We have asked the Mumbai police to probe if this is a part of a bigger racket, “ said D Raju, deputy commissioner of police (Hyderabad).
Navi Mumbai airport tender on Feb 5
Mumbai: Setting the ball rolling for building the Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA), the City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra Ltd (CIDCO) is all set to float a global Request for Qualification (RFQ) on February 5.
“The RFQ would be announced on February 5,” CIDCO Chairman Pramod Hindurao told a news conference on Wednesday.
The NMIA has received clearances - and a package for land acquisition had been finalised following a series of initiatives by Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan.
As a matter of fact CIDCO Managing Director Sanjay Bhatia, was part of the Chavan-led delegation that visited Davos last week to showcase Maharashtra and attract big ticket investments and projects.
The project cost expected to be over Rs 10,000 crore. The proposed airport will have two parallel runways 1.55 kms apart, even though it was initially suggested that their separation length will be 1.8 kms.
Development through Public-Private-Participation mode in which the private party will hold 74 per cent, and state-owned CIDCO and Airports Authority of India (AAI) will have 13 per cent stake each.
The proposed site in Navi Mumbai is 20 km from the main city and 35 km from the existing Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai.
Development through Public-Private-Participation mode in which the private party will hold 74 per cent, and state-owned CIDCO and Airports Authority of India (AAI) will have 13 per cent stake each.
The proposed site in Navi Mumbai is 20 km from the main city and 35 km from the existing Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai.
It is expected to handle 10 million passengers in its first operational year, doubling it to 20 million in eight years. The aim is that the airport would have a handling capacity of 40 million passengers by 2030.
Of the 2,268 hectares of land required for the airport project, so far 1,572 hectares of both government-owned and private land are in CIDCO's possession. However, nearly 671 hectare private land was yet to be acquired. CIDCO will need 1,160 hectares of the total 2,268 hectares for the actual airport.
Of the 2,268 hectares of land required for the airport project, so far 1,572 hectares of both government-owned and private land are in CIDCO's possession. However, nearly 671 hectare private land was yet to be acquired. CIDCO will need 1,160 hectares of the total 2,268 hectares for the actual airport.
Mumbai: City of garbage hits a dead end
The dumping ground at Deonar.
In 2011-12, Mumbai alone accounted for 6.11% of the total waste generated daily in India. As its waste piles up, the
land-starved city is staring at the big question — where to dump? Our reporters look at options.
Of the 1,27,486 tonnes of waste generated daily in India in 2011-12, Mumbai alone accounted for 6.11 per cent. It is estimated that every resident in the metropolis now generates about 630 grams of waste daily, a figure that is expected to touch 1 kg in the coming years. Land-starved that the city is, this leaves its planners with an extremely difficult choice — where to dump?
The predicament, coupled with concerns for high-level emissions of greenhouse gases from the city’s unsanitary landfills and the growth of bacteria that cause life-threatening diseases, has fuelled the prospects of the waste management industry, which has yet to firmly establish itself in India. Estimates suggest that the Rs 60,000-crore industry has the potential to grow at 10-15 per cent a year. Foretelling the latent possibilities of this business, Dr Amiya Sahu, president of National Solid Waste Association of India (NSWAI) and member of the Planning Commission’s task force for Solid Waste Management (SWM), says, “Garbage is money, if handled properly.”
While the quantum of garbage generated by the city is only expected to increase, the infrastructure necessary to manage it is still not in place. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has ambitious plans to process and manage the 7,000-8,000 metric tonnes (MT) of waste generated daily. But since the formulation of the Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) Rules (management and handling) in 2000, most of these ideas have either failed to take off the drawing board or are poorly implemented today.
CURRENT SITUATION
Environmentalists believe the BMC’s current policies are in violation of MSW Rules, 2000, as the corporation allows compactor trucks to collect mixed waste and fails to penalise buildings that do not segregate waste. In February last year, a circular issued by deputy municipal commissioner (SWM) Prakash Patil stated that by July 2013, the corporation would stop accepting mixed waste and issue legal notices to housing societies that fail to segregate waste at the source.
The big announcement, however, fell flat as the corporation failed to provide vehicles for collecting dry waste from housing societies. Since last year, the corporation has been working on a long-term plan to ensure 100 per cent segregation by March 2015. The plan has yet to be finalised.
“Segregation was widely successful between 1997 and 2004, where the civic body roped in ALMs to encourage composting in an effort to decentralise waste management. But the current policy, of awarding centralised contracts to private companies running compactor trucks and paying a tipping fee to private contractor (the case in Kanjurmarg) for every tonne of waste accepted at the dumpyard, reverses the previous successful policies,” Rishi Aggarwal, a research fellow with Observer Research Foundation, says adding that the civic body has failed to make residents a partner in solid waste management, but has put its faith in private parties to manage waste.
Questions have been repeatedly raised over the quality of service provided by the contractors in collection and transportation of waste. Critics say while the BMC has an elaborate system in place for collection and transportation of waste, there are no real-time checks in place to see if the appointed contractors are following specifications. In a major health hazard, conservancy workers involved in collection, transportation and disposal continue to work
without wearing the prescribed rubber gloves, face masks, reflector jackets and safety shoes.
In a bid to introduce remote real-time monitoring of the system, the civic body is now working with global analytical company CRISIL to develop a software that will facilitate checks with minimum dependence on on-site employees. “We are working on removing the human element in the monitoring of all services. Instead of assigning officers to inspect the work, it will be monitored from the offices through live feeds,” says Patil.
The initiative is part of the civic body’s attempt to comply with standards set by the Ministry of Urban Development’s (MoUD) for urban local bodies to enhance the quality of civic amenities. Apart from effective garbage collection, the civic body will also have to ensure 80 per cent recovery of collected waste through recycling, 100 per cent scientific disposal of municipal solid waste, 100 per cent cost recovery in SWM services and 90 per cent efficiency in collection of SWM charges.
Starting with collection, Dr Sahu says, BMC should first provide the necessary infrastructure to encourage segregation. “If BMC wants to increase segregation of waste, it will first have to invest in more dust bins for Mumbai. Different dust bins for different types of waste should be provided so that residents are publicly educated to segregate wet waste from paper, plastic, glass and metal. Even the community waste bins today are overflowing and unsanitary. If they are better designed, we can use these effectively,” says Dr Sahu.
In early 2013, the corporation had announced plans to acquire 20,000 waste bins that would promote segregation. However, so far, it is yet to float a tender.
While BMC anticipates an increase in the amount of waste generated over the next 20 years, its SWM department claims that through these plans for segregation and waste-processing, the amount of waste that reaches the city’s three dumping grounds (currently 7000-8000 MT) will be limited to less than 10,000 MT.
According to Dr Sahu, the corporation would be better able to achieve this if it invested in built-in shredders for dry waste vehicles travelling to dumping grounds. “The amount of dry waste that is actually transported to the dumping grounds is half of the vehicle’s carrying capacity. It is an absolute waste of fuel and space. If the corporation uses vehicles with built-in shredders, fewer trips will be needed and more waste can be transported, thus saving up on fuel costs and other related expenses,” he says.
DUMPING GROUNDS
Mumbai’s three dumping grounds in question are Deonar, Mulund and the recently created Kanjurmarg landfill. The Kanjurmarg dumping ground has been stuck in litigation in the Bombay High Court as environmental organisations including the Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority (MCZMA) have alleged illegal dumping on wetlands and coastal regulatory zone (CRZ) areas that fall within the landfill site’s area of 141 hectares.
Deonar, along with Mulund landfill, was slated for closure five years ago in 2009. On account of the legal complications with Kanjurmarg, Deonar continues to be overburdened with the bulk of the city’s garbage (5,500 MT) being dumped here.
Moreover, while the height of the waste tower at Deonar has reached about 55 metres, as against the 35-metre cap mandated by the Airports Authority of India, none of the dumping grounds have a single waste processing unit despite Mumbai’s high generation of waste.
In a futile exercise, the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) has served the two landfills notices for failing to comply with the standards set by MSW Rules, 2000. In fact, for the Mulund landfill, MPCB’s sub-regional officer V N Patil has even submitted a proposal for the forfeiture of BMC’s bank guarantee for non-compliance of MSW rules.
“We plan to set up a biomethanation plant at Mulund dumping ground, but we are currently in the process of terminating the contract with its landfill manager. Once the process is over, we will float tenders for setting up the plant there,” a civic official said.
The official added that to ensure the pressure on landfills does not increase drastically, waste-processing plants at transfer stations and composting sites at civic markets and gardens in each of Mumbai’s 24 wards have been planned in the forthcoming Development Plan.
“This can later be used as manure for plants in the area. This will also reduce the pressure on the eastern suburbs, which is currently where all of the city’s landfills are located. Even the debris that is mixed with the MSW can be reused for construction material,” the official said.
Activists, however, feel the corporation should engage itself more closely with the landfill management activities.
Dr Sahu says, “In the long run, the city would benefit better from waste management if the municipality itself owned the plants. In foreign countries such as Sweden and France, where waste-processing technologies are successfully carried out in a big way, the municipality owns the plant. Only if the corporation is in control of these establishments will it understand the nuances of waste management in a city.”
Till these plans take off, Kanjurmarg is the city’s only landfill where construction of a bio-reactor is already under way. Still, Dr Sahu contends that the waste-processing technology does not do much for the garbage that will collect at the landfill site.
“A bio-reactor at Kanjurmarg would merely make the dumping ground a secure landfill as mandated by the 2000 MSW Rules as it is also located away from habitation. The bio-reactor basically ensures the methanisation of bio-degradable waste for fuel purposes. But it does not specifically process waste for energy. Moreover, on account of the terrain of the land which is mainly marshy in nature, effective fuel generation from waste cannot be carried out,” says Dr Sahu. He suggests that for increased production of methane, the corporation could mix sewerage sludge with the wet waste as it will generate better results for producing energy.
THE ROAD AHEAD
Recently, in 2013, the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) brought out a draft revision of the 2000 rules which, though yet to be gazetted, focus on incineration as a method of processing and disposing waste. Encouraged by this, BMC has floated an expression of interest (EOI) to set up a 1000-tonne waste-to-energy (W2E) incineration plant at Deonar. While the EOI received tremendous response with 22 international firms participating in the bids, there is no proof of successful implementation of this processing method in India to date, despite several attempts in various states including the national capital.
“So far, incineration plants only burn waste and have failed to convert this into energy. The plant at Vijayawada in Andhra Pradhesh was the first to be set up, and it has now closed down. Similar plants in Hyderabad and Lucknow have also been shut. In Delhi, there was a plant set up by a Danish company that eventually failed. Another incineration plant set up there by the Jindal group too has run into problems as it does not have a proper cleaning system, leading to a lot of smoke generation while processing through the furnace,” says Dr Sahu.
Dr Sahu recommends the diversification of waste processing technologies. “If we have different types of waste processors, we can effectively handle different compositions of waste coming from different parts of the city as the demographics in Mumbai are highly varied. We should have a combination of technologies including incineration, pyrolysis, gasification, and biomethanisation,” he says.
Offering another solution to decrease the amount of waste reaching the landfill, Aggarwal suggests financial incentives for conscientious citizenry to promote segregation at the source.”Instead of paying the contractors for accepting waste at landfills, property tax rebates should be given to buildings that generate minimal garbage and segregate waste,” said Aggarwal.
In an example of minimal amount of waste reaching landfills, 95 per cent of the waste generated from the construction of Chhatraparti Shivaji International Airport terminal T2 was will be reused at the site for levelling and filling purposes. “Some of the waste material such as steel and cement blocks has been sold to vendors and dealers. Meanwhile, the waste material that cannot be reused or sold has been donated for use in other sites,” said M Anand, principal counsellor, Indian Green Building Council, the agency which rated the structure for its green design.
The journey from doorstep to landfill
* Every housing society appoints a garbage collector to carry out door-to-door collection. The collected waste is then handed over to the municipal corporation’s garbage collection vehicles.
* Garbage transportation vehicles begin their journey every day at 7 am when they report to Motor Loader (ML) Chowks of each ward. At the chowk, every vehicle’s attendance is recorded and the collectors are handed tools and equipment for collection along with a log sheet of various garbage collection points for the day.
* There are 3,751 collection points in the city. As per the MSW Rules of 2000, the collection equipment must include face masks, rubber gloves, reflector jackets and safety shoes, though conservancy workers in Mumbai are invariably seen without these tools.
* Garbage is collected from slum areas through community-based organisations (CBOs) under the slum adoption scheme (Swachcha Mumbai Prabodhan Abhiyan). The CBOs deposit the waste into the civic body’s 5800 community waste bins stationed at various points across Mumbai.
* According to the civic SWM department, one tempo travels to each ward daily to collect dry waste, which is then sold off to recycling agencies.
*The ward checkpoints, SWM employees verify if the vehicles are filled to the brim. Smaller collection vans are dispatched to transfer stations where the garbage is loaded into bigger vehicles and transported to the dumping grounds.
*Currently, waste is only transported to Deonar (5,500 metric tonnes daily) and Mulund (2000 to 3000 metric tonnes). Bigger collection vehicles such as compactors and hook leaf containers are sent directly to the dump yards, where authorities weigh the vehicles and log in the their attendance. The vehicles wait in a queue and are let into the grounds in a single file to offload the waste at the designated spot.
No comments:
Post a Comment