Kakinada Municipal Corporation etches its name in NITI Aayog report

Kakinada: The coastal town of Kakinada, which was selected as one of the Smart Cities in the country, has secured name for its best practices in Solid Waste Management Cities category in a report published by NITI Aayog. According to the report, the Kakinada Municipal Corporation (KMC) has evolved an efficient mechanism for the collection and processing of solid waste only within one year.

Before June 2020 every street was a dump yard with the municipal staff collecting garbage erratically and 90 per cent of the daily complaints reviewed by the KMC were related to municipal solid waste. Community bins used to overflow attracting stray animals. The prolonged lockdown due to Covid19 exacerbated the situation. After a series of deliberations to deal with the situation, the city introduced an advanced technology and innovative solutions. Web-based solutions helped the municipality institute with a state-of-the-art monitoring system for overseeing of waste management operations and reducing the number of complaints was taken as one of the yardsticks to measure the performance of the new regime.

The city generates 213 tonnes of waste every day (560gm per person per day). Within one year, the city achieved 100 per cent door-to-door collection, 60 per cent source segregation, processing of 84 per cent of the segregated waste and eradication of garbage piles with the installation of street side garbage bins.

KMC Commissioner Swapnil Dinakar Pundkar said that Kakinada was selected in the concept of technology innovation and technology initiatives and the practices adopted by the KMC was published in the report of NITI Ayog. He said that 28 cities have been selected for the best practices in solid waste management concept out of which three—Kakinada, Bobbili and Vijayawada—were from Andhra Pradesh.