BBMP

The tin sheet shacks in Ejipura EWS (Economically Weaker Section) quarters are lined up so close to each other, that it is not easy to tell one house from the next. Outside the shacks, little girls and boys are seen carrying small pots of water which they have collected from somewhere. In one of the houses stays Aisha (name changed), with her husband, four children, and parents-in-law. Like most families here, this family of eight also does not get water to their house. Aisha, 38, spends a lot of her time standing in queue in front of public taps. Children…

Nearly 500-600 trucks with trash, operating in the dark of the night, dump their contents in Mandur every day. “After 10 pm, the trucks start pouring in and it goes on till early hours of the morning,” says Munianjaneyappa, 72, a resident of Mandur. Munianjaneyappa walked the entire 25 km of the padayatra from Mandur to Domlur, Bangalore, on Saturday, December 22nd, as part of the Lok Satta-organised 'Dumping SAAKU' campaign. Around 50 people, including residents of Mandur, Lok Satta party supporters - many of them young professionals - and political and social activists took part in the walk. Former…

In January this year, the High Court of Karnataka had ordered that commercial activities should not be allowed in residential areas in Bengaluru. But even after this, BBMP continued to give sanctions in violation of the verdict. Many shops had come up without any BBMP sanctions at all also. Citizen Matters had reported on these violations earlier. Pic: Sudha Narasimhachar However, in a hearing on November 22nd, the court ordered BBMP to submit the list of all such sanctions that it gave in residential areas after the January order. Surprisingly, BBMP informed court that it had cancelled all such sanctions…

What will we do with all the garbage produced is the biggest question on majority of the apartment residents these days. BBMP's ambiguous statements on the issue is not making it any simpler.While apartment residents are miffed about this treatment meted out to them, they cite practical reasons as to why asking apartment complexes to handle their own waste is not such a good idea. Though, the BBMP website says the waste has to be segregated into six categories, some residents complain that the pourakarmikas simply dump them into just wet and dry categories while collecting. In the core city…

Apartments are bulk generators; we won't collect garbage from them. No, apartments are not bulk generators; we will collect waste from them. BBMP has been going back and forth on this issue for over two months now. As the December 1st deadline, for waste segregation at source is here, there is still no clarity on where the waste from the apartment complexes is going to go. Media reports have quoted BBMP Commissioner Rajneesh Goel saying that apartments are now excluded from the bulk generators list. However BBMP's website has the notification dated October 1st, that has categorised apartments under bulk…

As the fear of bird flu looms over Bangalore, here are some facts that one ought to know: What is bird flu?Flu stands for influenza, a viral infection caused by the flu virus. And bird flu is ‘flu occurring in birds'. Depending on minor differences on the genetic make up of the virus, influenza virus is of type A, B and C. The current outbreak is caused by a subtype of influenza A, known as H5N1.If it is an infection of birds, why should humans be worried?Humans can catch bird flu directly through close contact with live infected birds. It…

Garbage is creating a lot of noise in Bangalore these days. It is the biggest nuisance that development causes in all urban centres. Drive to an interior village (other than the village where your city dumps the garbage, of course) and you will find it pretty clean, as compared to your own neighbourhood, where mounds of plastic garbage lie strewn beside every posh apartment complex or housing locality! Even in villages, the garbage that you spot mostly contains plastic bags which have entered the lives of the rural folk too. Other than that, most of the garbage collected in a…

Twenty days after BBMP issued his transfer, Brijesh Kumar, Chief Conservator of Forests (CCF) was able to get a stay on it. The state government's Urban Development Department (UDD) issued the stay, saying that BBMP could not make the decision on its own.In the order, written in Kannada, UDD clearly says that BBMP's decision was unilateral, and that no permission was asked from UDD. It was UDD that had passed the initial orders to create the new CCF position in BBMP, and to appoint IFS officer Kumar to it.BBMP had issued Kumar's transfer order on October 11th, and the officer…

BBMP has said that cluster housing societies (apartments or villas) have to manage their own garbage. These housing complexes do not even have the public water supply system. However, the residents of these clusters are not exempt from any tax or cess to be paid to the BBMP, including the so-called development expenses. How fair is this? Who has to supervise whether these clusters really segregate wet and dry waste and dispose them in the right manner? With uncontrolled growth, city authorities are not able to provide the infrastructural support. Pic Sudha Narasimhachar Wet waste management may be supervised by…

This month, new contractors will start garbage clearance work in 168 wards in the city. These wards are covered in 77 packages. Fifty of the 77 packages have gone to a single company, named BVG India Pvt Ltd. This company has also bid for extremely low amounts in most packages. In one case, its bid amount was 50% lesser than BBMP's estimated amount. The corporate office of BVG India in Vasanth Nagar. This company won the highest number of garbage tenders in the city. Pic: Navya P K But there is another story behind these low amounts - BVG seems…