AMPATI: With an eye at being the first garbage-free district in the State, South West Garo Hills is all set to take up Integrated and Sustainable Solid & Liquid Resource Management (SLRM) project. In this connection, garbage expert and pioneer in solid & liquid waste management (Garbage to Gold) in India C. Srinivasan from Vellore, Tamil Nadu, was on a three-day visit to the district to impart training on SLRM for block and village level functionaries at Ampati and made field visit to some of the pilot villages in the district from Wednesday to Friday.
Srinivasan, who has been featured on Aamir Khan’s TV reality show Satyamev Jayate, is the Project Director of Indian Green Service (IGS) and National Resource Person on SLRM and his concept has been adopted in many cities including Jodhpur, Mumbai and Bangalore.
SLRM project in the district is the initiative of DC Ramkumar S in collaboration with the District Swachh Bharat Mission (G) and 50 villages have been selected for the project in the first phase.
“Understanding how to handle solid and liquid waste that we generate everyday is of paramount importance,” the DC said and expressed hope and confidence that this project would change the entire system of waste disposal and bring about complete transformation in the lives of the people.
While Srinivasan maintained that India and many other countries are still struggling over the garbage issue. In solid & liquid waste management, understanding garbage and resource is very important.
According to him, constructing roadside dustbins in India was a big mistake because people dump almost anything and everything into them and they became a public nuisance. Even dead animal carcasses are thrown in the same garbage. “Throwing mixed garbage is a natural fly breeding method. Wherever there is garbage there will be flies and where cow dung is dumped the problem is even more aggravated. Roadside garbage attracts stray dogs, pigs and cows and leads to many other problems including blocked drainage. Blocked drainage and stagnant waters become breeding ground for mosquitoes,” he said.
During the two-day training programme organised by the District Swachh Bharat Mission (G) at Ampati MFC, Srinivasan explained to the participants the concept of converting garbage into a resource with the help of visuals from his project activities
In this project, a 15-day master training of trainers programme will be conducted for supervisors and workers and will be given certificates before they start the work. For every village five persons, including one supervisor and four workers will be selected. While a supervisor has to be class X pass, no qualification is required for the workers. “This project can provide green jobs for the unemployed youths in the villages,” Srinivasan said.
Preference would be given to those in the BPL list
Srinivasan said that there is no need for a big lorry or heavy vehicle in this management. A simple tricycle mounted with a container having two compartments in red and green is used for collecting garbage.
