Industrialists pitch in to clean up Jammu

Jammu-based Kashmir Environment Welfare Cooperative Association Ltd (KEWCAL), promoted by industrialists of the Jammu region, has offered to install a garbage disposal plant in the city.

This is principally because of the local municipality's inability to handle the waste and dispose of the garbage generated in Jammu.

Head of the organisation Rakesh Gupta, who is also Jammu Kashmir Polythene Manufacturers' Association president, said, "We offer to install a plant for scientifically disposing of garbage in the greater Jammu city, if the Jammu Municipal Corporation co-operates with us."

Expressing concern at growing pollution in Jammu, Srinagar, and other towns of the state, Gupta stressed the need for implementing the Environment Protection Act, 1986.

The Act provides for undertaking projects to dispose of municipal solid waste and garbage, and for this, specific roles have been cut out for municipal and other civic bodies, under the overall supervision of district magistrates.

The Act also provides for setting up plants for a scientific disposal of garbage and municipal solid waste, either by the local bodies on their own or through voluntary organisations/NGOs.

Gupta said it was regrettable that no steps had been taken by the authorities in the state to undertake any such project.

He said, "The Jammu Municipal Corporation and Srinagar Municipal Corporation are collecting garbage through century-old methods and it is being dumped at various places, thrown into nullahs, and in rivers. Neither is following the rules, regulations, and standing orders of the Supreme Court and the Solid Waste Management and Handling Rules of the Environment Protection Act. Further, by dumping heaps of garbage and waste, which is generated daily in tonnes, they are polluting the environment."

Gupta said, "It is painful that neither the Jammu Municipal Corporation nor the Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC) has any plan to tackle this problem. The two are said to have no resources to modernise the methods of garbage collection."

"We have sought the cooperation other NGOs and the public at large besides the municipal corporations, so that the pollution level is reduced to a considerable extent," he added.