50,000 in Pune carry dreaded HIV virus

Addressing a meeting of the Viman Nagar Citizens’ Forum, Kapoor dropped another bombshell as he told the shocked audience that according to a recent survey the number of clients visiting commercial sex workers in the city drops significantly in March – the time when the student population gets busy with examinations. “The citizens should consider it their duty along with that of the municipal corporation to arrest the spread of this disease since it has already begun threatening the fabric of our social and personal life,” Kapoor asserted.

Though meeting was convened by the forum to propagate vermiculture to reduce the offload of garbage from households into the corporation’s bins, it ended up in an open house with residents voicing their grievances on the problems faced by their locality and Kapoor summing up the debate by touching upon a variety of topics from AIDS to garbage mainly to highlight to citizens’ “ostrich-like” attitude towards major issues.

“Please do not mind if I say that in Pune the citizenry do not seem to act unless things reach a flash point. We are now discussing the traffic somewhat seriously when the problem has reached its crisis point. The same holds good for other problems including AIDS and other issues,” he said apparently taking cue from the coordinator of the Express Citizens’ Forum who earlier lamented that promotion of vermiculture and segregation of wet and dry garbage has not really picked up as a mass movement despite sporadic attempts by isolated activists in different parts of the city since the past 15 years.

The PMC has offered a cash grant of Rs 1,000 to any group of 10 households who collectively take up vermiculture project. This will partly cover the initial cost of about Rs 4,000 per 10 families. For several months, “though I kept drawing attention of the people to the allocation of Rs six lakh in the current year’s budget for this grant,” there were no takers at all. A recent awareness awareness drive recently yielded some result. “In the last 45 days,” Kapoor declared, “a grand total of six groups have applied for the grant.”

Application for the grant can be made either to him directly at the municipal headquarters or to the respective ward officers. Under the vermiculture project, each family collects wet and dry garbage – that is, primarily kitchen waste and other non-biodegradable waste – in two separate buckets. The wet garbage is used to produce rich manure within the courtyards of their bungalows or housing societies and the dry garbage is collected away by a pre-identified ragpicker at a designated time every day. Disposal of garbage in the municipal corporation’s bins thus gets reduced to almost zero.

Kapoor said about 3,000 ragpickers have been registered with the PMC corporation. In fact, the civic body can now provide a list of ragpickers serving a particular locality and also suggest the timing at which the dry garbage would be collected by them.

He said Pune produces about 910 tonnes of garbage every day which is deposited by citizens in 1,200 containers and about 3,000 bins throughout the city.

The PMC has been distributing through its head and ward offices “pink cards” on which citizens can send in their specific complaints about the garbage bins not getting cleared. The complaints are attended promptly, he assured. Yet, so far, only 78 complaint cards have been receive.

Earlier, Sheila Christian, vice-president of the National Society for Clean Cities, explained in detail the simple but effective way to produce manure from wet household garbage through vermiculture. (See Actionline page, Pune Newsline, Sunday, November 29.) She said the earthworms used in the process being highly aerobic, suck in plenty of oxygen to leave no stink and no trace of any component that may adversely affect the health. On the other hand, it has been observed that the incidence of flies and mosquitoes has sharply dropped in places – for example at Jehangir Hospital – where vermiculture is being practiced as an effective waste disposal method.

Laxmi Narayan, an activist associated with the SNDT university who has mobilised ragpickers in the city, appealed to the citizens to pay Rs 10 per month as honorarium to the ragpicker who would come to their doorsteps and take away the dry garbage (while the wet is used by the owner for vermiculture). There has been some reservation about this particularly in housing societies which have their own sweepers and watchmen. However, she pointed out, sweepers visiting housing societies are not interested in ragpicking. The registered ragpickers on the other hand will collect all their dry waste, recycle most of it, and then deposit the negligible quantity of the residual in corporation’s garbage bins. Ten rupees is too small an amount to be doled out as an incentive that is given to the ragpicker to come to the droosteps, she argued.

President of the National Society for Clean Cities-Pune Gita Vir also spoke. Secretary of the Viman Nagar Citizens’ Forum Qaneez Sukhrani conducted the proceedings.