LMC poisoning Lucknow, say IIM-L ?sleuths?

Garbage dumped in the open or in ponds ,Bio-medical waste mixed with garbage , Garbage buried in ditches.

ON JUNE 30, when an Indian Institute of Management (IIM)-Lucknow team visited various hospitals to check how they were disposing away bio-medical waste, to their amazement the team found that hazardous waste was being dumped into the Gomti.

On Saturday, the team that went out to check how the Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC) was disposing away domestic & bio-medical waste and garbage, it came back shocked again. The team found that instead of destroying the garbage, the LMC employees were digging up ditches and burying hazardous waste. At some sites, the LMC staff was dumping garbage even in the open. In some instances, bio-medical waste had been mixed with domestic waste and dumped into ponds.

The IIM-L team of volunteers and environmentalists including Dr SS Sahni, Dr Prashant Singh, Pankaj Chauhan, Richa Pandey and RD Dewedi visited Bhikhampur to find out how the incinerator installed by LMC was working.

The employees managing the incinerator told the team that due to a technical snag, the incinerator had not been working since February to July 10.
During this period, the LMC staff said, “We dug up a ditch and buried the garbage!”

This is shocking for, as the IIM-L experts said, “The chemicals in the waste seep to the ground water and pollute it. The sanitary landfill method for the disposal of the garbage has not been followed by the LMC”.

During investigations during the last several weeks, the IIM-L team has found that bio-medical waste from hospitals, nursing homes and pathology centres is being dumped along with domestic waste. The quantity of waste from hospitals is much higher than what hospital officials reveal to the LMC. Not only is dangerous waste was being dumped in the open but several hospitals are actually cheating the government, the IIM-L volunteers lamented. The waste disposal charge being paid by them to the LMC is Rs 2 per bed for 500 gm of waste each day. A 200-bed hospital should generate 150 kg but the hospitals are generating around 450 kg bio-medical wastes, they said.

IIM-L is organising a workshop on legal awareness and youth participation in environment compliance and enforcement. Four teams led by Prof DS Sengar have visited various garbage-dumping sites of LMC, as part of this workshop.

The team that visited Dubagga on Saturday was shocked by the stench from the heap of garbage dumped by the side of the road thereby, exposing the LMC bosses’ claim that all precautions were adopted in the disposal of waste.

The members of the second IIM-L team, Dr Prem Prakash, Balwinder Singh, Raj Shekhar Pandey and Jagdish Sahu, said people residing near the garbage dumping place complained that they suffered from asthma, allergies, water-borne and skin disease because of this callousness and all their complaints to the Corporation had gone in vain.

The IIM-L third including Vikas Gupta, Mandhata Singh, Shanatnu Shah  and Jaspal Singh that visited Paltan Chavvani found that the local mafia had captured the garbage-dumping house.

LMC employees were left with no other option but to dump the garbage in the open.

Carcass were also dumped by the LMC at the temporary dumping ground and the threat of an an epidemic loomed large, the team said.

The fourth team of Azhar Ali, Vinod Sharma, Pawan Kumar and Badshah Singh went to Jankipuram only to find garbage littered on the side of the road.

No containers had been provided by the LMC. Garbage is cleared by the LMC staff twice a month and the residents were left with no option but to live with the filth in their surroundings.