Bengaluru — The city must be kept clean. Wet and dry waste must be separated. If you dump your household garbage on the streets, we will again dump garbage in front of your house and fine you! Thus the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) has implemented a new measure. Yes, this is the right action for those who say “I don’t want garbage near my house, go and dump it near someone else’s.”
But what is the remedy when the Greater Bengaluru Authority itself makes a mistake? People are asking this.
About 50% of the city’s residents leave home for work. They work in shifts: first, general, second and night shifts. In such a situation, how can one put out garbage exactly when the garbage truck arrives? There is no fixed time when the garbage vehicle comes. When the vehicle comes in front of the house, they give a visual signal — a bell sound. Noting this, one has to rush and deliver the garbage within minutes.
Strangely, the vehicle usually completes a round past every house in the city by 10 a.m. every morning. So what should the people who have already left for work in the morning do? Where should they put their garbage? What if the garbage vehicle doesn’t come for collection? The civic workers say that if you put a garbage bag in front of the house it cannot be shifted to the garbage vehicle. Also, when left in front of the house, street dogs may drag it away to scavenge, which is common.
Also, the Greater Bengaluru Authority collects a garbage cess just like when it was BBMP. During property tax collection the garbage tax is collected along with it. Now that garbage is taxed, if the rules are violated, households could face the dire situation of heavy fines for piles of garbage left in front of their homes. Government Forgets Farmers' Plight in Administrative Chair Tussle: "What difference does it make if this anti-farmer government stays or goes?"
What should households do with their garbage? Should you take leave from work and sit at home to put out the garbage? Don’t you need money to pay the garbage tax while you have no work and are paying rent and managing life? A government that says “money, money” for everything has not found simple ways to provide facilities to solve the garbage problem. It is also true that when there are problems in garbage collection, some officials and public representatives fill their own pockets. If this allegation is false even once, Bengaluru’s ministers, legislators and officials should solve the garbage problem — or at least stop causing trouble to the people.