February 11, 2019:

The Principal Bench of National Green Tribunal, headed by Sh. Adarsh Kumar Goel has asked the Monitoring Committee to come up with an Action Taken Report on the management of Solid Waste.

Local bodies near the banks of the Periyar will be asked to prepare an inventory of solid waste management facilities and details of waste generated.

A decision to this effect was taken at the first meeting of a monitoring committee constituted by the National Green Tribunal (NGT).

The NGT had last month ordered the formation of a joint committee consisting of members of the Central Pollution Control Board and the Kerala State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) and the District Magistrate to prepare an action plan for compliance with management of bio-medical waste and solid waste management rules.

The principal bench of the tribunal has also asked the committee to come up with an action taken report on the management of solid waste, including biomedical waste, within a month.

It was while considering a writ petition initiated following a letter forwarded by R. Bhaskaran, a former Judge of the Kerala High Court, on dumping of waste from hospitals and slaughter houses into the Periyar that the order was issued.

The panchayats will be provided a questionnaire to furnish data on waste, including biomedical waste, septage, and solid waste. The assistant environmental engineers of the board will also be put in charge of the programme, said a senior KSCPB official who attended the meeting. The data provided by the local bodies will be physically verified, and a report will be submitted to the NGT. A set of authentic data is required to prepare the action plan for curbing waste dumping into the river system, he added.

The secretaries of the local bodies will be briefed about the directives of the NGT during a two-day workshop, which will begin at the Kerala Institute of Local Administration (KILA) on February 12, he said.

The board had come under fire from the NGT for its “inability to enforce laws related to waste management.”

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