Kerala government overlooks Suchitwa on waste issues

Thiruvananthapuram: The Suchitwa Mission technical committee is being reportedly sidelined, as the state government has kept it out of various discussions on centralised plants. When the state asked Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation (KSIDC) to invite entrepreneurs of centralised plants, an expert committee independent of the Suchitwa Mission committee was formed to evaluate the technology. The committee’s role ended when it submitted a report after which 7 entrepreneurs were shortlisted.

Now newer committees have been formed, making the technical committee at Suchitwa Mission looking redundant. A state-level advisory committee on waste management chaired by chief secretary K.M. Abraham was formed last week to chalk out an action plan in connection with centralised plants. It has additional chief secretaries Tom Jose, P.H. Kurian, James Varghese and Paul Antony, as well as LSGD principal secretary T. K. Jose as its members. Sources in KSIDC said that experts will be consulted eventually.

A separate committee had to be formed as Suchitwa Mission’s original policy is connected with decentralised waste management, according to M.C. Duttan, scientific advisor to the chief minister. He said that the mission’s activities encouraging source-level waste management will proceed with the same momentum, but centralised plants are needed as the decentralised management was not effective in corporations and municipalities. Meanwhile, yet another committee has been formed under Haritha Keralam mission to discuss the merits of existing decentralised waste management systems and the seven  centralised waste management technologies. Though some of the experts of the SM technical committee have been included here, it functions independent of the SM committee.