6 a.m. deadline for garbage collection

Rasika Somarathna

Garbage mountains are to be a thing of the past with guidelines to be issued shortly for collection of all garbage before 6 a.m. from road sides and street corners.

The Environment and Natural Resources Ministry is set to issue guidelines giving effect to this decision to all local authorities. This latest move revealed by Minister Champika Ranawaka on Monday came with the launch of the National Solid Waste Management programme Pilisaru which intends to propagate the vision of making Sri Lanka a country free of solid waste by 2012.

According to statistics the daily generation of solid waste in Sri Lanka is in the range of 6,400 tons where as only 2,800 tons is collected with the Western Province accounting for 58.5 per cent of the total.

According to the Minister all relevant Local Authorities are to be provided with backing in the form of men, material and funds to achieve optimum levels in the collection process.

While the project gets technical assistance from Japan new laws too are in the offing with the formation of a national policy in waste management. According to the Minister there would be no more garbage mountains in the future with the launch of the latest project expected to transform all waste into a viable resource.

Projects on recycling, power generation, composting etc. have been mooted adding enormous economic value to waste which is discarded or rejected, the Minister said. This is the biggest programme of its kind in the annals with an allocation of Rs. 600 million for the purpose with the full backing of President Mahinda Rajapaksa and is expected to achieve optimum levels in solid waste management by 2012.

The project is expected to address issues pertaining to solid waste management with a national approach by integrating local Governments to function as participatory units in the process of disposal with the Central Environment Authority manning the wheels.