Sambalpur Sinking under Garbage
Even though the city is sinking under rising piles of garbage, the proposed Integrated Municipal Solid Waste Management (IMSWM) system for Greater Sambalpur is yet to take off.
The sanitation of the city devoid of IMSWM system can be gauged from the latest ranking of cities under Swachh Bharat Mission. Of 476 cites surveyed across the country on cleanliness parameters, Sambalpur stands at 467 position.
After struggling to find a suitable location to construct solid waste management plant, Sambalpur Municipal Corporation (SMC) had identified land measuring 30 acres at Basantpur here last year. The SMC had also sought Request for Qualification-cum-Request for Proposal (RFQ-cum-RFP) on January 9 this year for selection of the agency to run the system for Greater Sambalpur. The deadline of submission of the proposal was scheduled for February 23. But, there was no response from any bidder. Later, the SMC extended the deadline of submission twice but in vain.
The project was supposed to be developed on Design-Build-Finance-Operate-Transfer (DBFOT) basis on public private partnership (PPP) mode at an estimated cost of Rs 18.05 crore. The scope of the project includes collection of municipal solid waste (MSW) from households, commercial establishments and markets, transportation of waste to secondary collection points and then to the landfill site, development of processing plant and sanitary landfill at Basantpur. The Greater Sambalpur comprising Sambalpur, Burla and Hirakud generates about 100 tonnes of MSW per day.
At present, waste management has become a headache for the SMC which is disposing the garbage whimsically here and there due to lack of a dumping yard. The garbage of Burla is being dumped over five acres of land in Mahatabnagar while in Hirakud, it is disposed near Gandhinagar and Sadeipali.
The civic body was dumping garbage over 26 acres of land at Jamadarpali here from 2011. As the locals objected to it, the dumping was stopped in January last year. Since then, the municipality has been struggling to find a suitable land for disposal of garbage.
The SMC had decided to develop an IMSWM system at Jamadarpali. But, the project failed to take off due to protest by locals.
Deputy Commissioner of SMC Sudhansu Kumar Bhoi said efforts are underway to implement the solid waste management project. Fresh RFQ-cum-RFP will be issued after revision of the shortcomings, he added.
IIM Sambalpur
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