Mandur: No deadline, garbage lorries to roll in

Bengaluru: If Mandur and all of Bengaluru believed that come November 30, the BBMP cannot dump garbage in the Mandur landfill, think again. BBMP Commissioner M. Lakshminarayan told Deccan Chronicle on Friday that it will process the waste and not dump it at the landfill.

Going against the CM Siddaramaiah’s promise when he intervened during protests and promised the villagers that dumping near the village would be stopped from November 30, the BBMP chief reiterating that garbage will be sent to Mandur from December 1, and that the Karnataka High Court, which is hearing a case, had told the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike on Friday that it can process waste anywhere. “Mandur is no exception,” he said.

“Whether Mavallipura or Mandur. The court has only told us not to dump garbage anywhere. It is not stopping us from processing garbage where there is a feasibility. There will be no special consideration for Mandur,” he said.

On fears that villagers will certainly protest, he said that they will be urged to cooperate. The state government may have set the December 1 deadline for Mandur, but with 28 days to go Corporators of several wards seem to be as clueless as ordinary Bengalureans about how the government is going to implement it. Some even criticized the government for committing to a date without a plan.

Areas such as Rajarajeshwari Nagar, Jnanabharati, Kengeri Satellite Town, Wilson Garden and Hebbal are facing problems with garbage disposal and the elected representatives of these wards are worried about what the government and BBMP are doing.

Rajarajeshwari Nagar ward corporator G.H. Ramachandra told Deccan Chronicle that his ward was sitting on a ticking bomb and there was no progress whatsoever.

“There is at least 25 tons of garbage in my ward which needs to be cleared and though a garbage processing plant was sanctioned nearly one-and-a-half years ago, the BBMP has still not set up the plant. I have no confidence the situation will be better in future, especially with the deadline nearing, the problem will intensify,” he said.

He alleged that the BBMP officials and local MLA M. Muniratna were not interested in solving the garbage crisis in the constituency. “It’s easy to make promises. But how could the government commit to a date even without a plan?” he questioned.

Attur ward K.N Geetha Shashikumar said the government should have made alternate plans before announcing the deadline. “At some point all of us had to wake up to scientific techniques of disposing garbage.

The government maybe heading in the right direction, but it should have not announced a date without alternative plans in place. As of now, I don’t know what it is planning to do as there seems to be no progress,” she said.

The garbage problem will mount from December 1 as the government made a commitment in haste, added Kaveripura ward Corporator R. Prakash.

“The garbage crisis is not new to the city and in a bid to please Mandur villagers, the government announced a random date. Now, with none of the plants being operational, it all seems to be a publicity stunt. The city is going to face serious problems,” he said.