Hyderabad: Littering to be penalised

Hyderabad: The GHMC has decided to penalise citizens for dumping trash on the roadsides and in their colonies. Irregular collection of garbage from households is no excuse.

Residents near the garbage pile will be held responsible for littering, and fines will be added to the property tax after issuing notice. The corporation has also decided to impose fines on the owners if garbage is dumped in their vacant land parcels. The garbage dumping will be monitored by sanitation surveillance vehicles.

According to highly-placed sources, the corporation is vexed with citizens for dumping trash in the open while it is working on the system of collecting garbage at the doorstep. However, as many as 15,012 complaints regarding garbage dumping have been made on the MYGHMC app, call centre, social media and through personal representations.

Most of these are about irregular garbage pick-up. An observer said the corporation would need to first resolve the core issue before embarking on its plan to penalise residents.

According to the new plan, the corporation will identify the open garbage dumping points and study the reason for trash being dumped in the open by quizzing residents in the vicinity and verify the same with garbage collectors.

The civic body would verify the amount of garbage dumped at each point from its surveillance vehicles.

The corporation would also rope in community resource persons and NGOs to deal with debris dumping. After dealing with these issues the corporation would impose fines on the residents and also owners of vacant lands. GHMC commissioner M. Dana Kishore said he had asked zonal and deputy commissioners to make inspections to transfer stations and areas in their jurisdiction to check the amount of trash dumped on the roadsides.

He asked them to identify the persons who dump garbage regularly on the wayside and impose fines on them. Mr Kishore instructed to take 2,500 households in each circle as a unit to take up micro planning of sanitation.

Mr Kishore said vacant lands had turned as garbage dumping points due to the negligence of owners. He instructed GHMC staff to issue notices and levy fines on them too. Mr Kishore has also asked to alert the residents in the vicinity to avoid such menace.