A stand-alone Report of the CAG on Solid Waste Management in the urban areas of Meghalaya raises several questions of the efficiency of the system. Rural Meghalaya including tourist destinations have no waste management systems in place. What’s interesting is the analysis of the financial resources allocated for solid waste management in urban Meghalaya over a period of five years. The bulk of resources were received from the Asian Development Bank’s external funded project of North Eastern Regional Capital Cities Development Investment Programme (NERCCDIP) which is for a period of ten years only and for specific activities. Hence this was a finite source of funds and as usual there are no sustainable action plans for the future. The audit survey found that the Municipal Boards were unable to meet even the operational costs of collection and disposal of municipal waste due to poor collection of user charges. Without any significant budgetary support from the State Government and inadequate resources generated by the Boards, the solid waste management in Meghalaya remains a challenge. The CAG has recommended that necessary steps be taken to augment financial resources of the Municipal Boards particularly the system of collection of user charges and strengthening their administrative capacity by recruiting the required manpower and providing adequate training to improve their efficiency and effectiveness in solid waste collection, transportation and processing.
A survey carried out in 26 Dorbar Shnong under Mawlai and Umpling census towns to ascertain collection of user charges in their areas found that in 15 Dorbar Shnong the user charges ranged from Rs 40 to Rs 130 per household. Three Dorbar Shnong have outsourced the waste collection to a Self Help Group (SHG) that was collecting household waste on payment basis from individual households. In the rest of the Dorbar Shnong no user charges were collected. In the absence of a legal framework in the form of bye-laws to govern the function of traditional institutions, waste collection was carried out as an informal and unorganised activity. User charges were decided in an ad-hoc and unscientific manner. The CAG survey pointed to some best practices from Sikkim where the Gangtok Municipal Corporation (GMC) engaged 22 NGOs to organise door to door collection of solid waste from households. A part of the collection was shared with the GMC. It is high time that drastic steps are taken to collect reasonable user charges for waste collection and for the traditional institutions of Meghalaya to evolve into modern governance bodies that are self-reliant and are able to inform the public that they have to pay for the waste they generate which requires to go through several processes so that it does not affect the environment.
Hospital waste and plastic waste continue to be the problem areas with no facilities yet to tackle such waste. The Survey has indicted the State Pollution Control Board for its failure to inventorise e-waste generation as required by the E-Waste Management Rules 2016. In all, therefore, waste management remains a great challenge in Meghalaya with no solution in sight!