| Cochin, the
primate city of Kerala, has a resident population of 6 lakh
living in 1,20000 house holds. The city generates 320 TPD
out of which 215 tons is domestic generation. Realizing that
SWM can not be up graded with out people’s participation
and involvement, the Corporation authorities initiated steps
to motivate community through awareness creation programmes
in 1989. One of the major deficiencies in SWM was the absence
of community participation in storage at source and primary
collection. In order to motivate community, Corporation decided
to develop Pilot Project for source storage and community
managed primary collection. Panampally Nagar, a well established
housing colony was identified for the purpose and discussions
were initiated on developing a house to house collection system.
A part of the colony with 400 households was selected initially
to be covered by two primary collection vehicles- Containerized
hand carts with six 50 liters FRP bins. Trained rag pickers
were employed by the Residents association for House to house
collection. The crew of two with one push cart covered 200
houses daily. The waste collected was transferred to dumper
container for subsequent transportation to landfill site by
Corporation. At present, 2000 households are covered under
the scheme. In addition, ten more vehicles have been procured
by community which were sponsored by the NGOs. |
