Joint Committee report in the matter of Tribunal on its own motion Suo Motu based on the news item in Deccan Chronicle newspaper, March 16, 2021 "Garbage piles on roads, foul smell as GHMC removes bins under new initiative" Vs The Principal Secretary of Telangana & Others.

The newspaper report said that on account of initiative taken by the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) to make Hyderabad a bin-free city and taking steps to collect the garbage generated from the houses. But in spite of that, garbage is being dumped on the road sides causing serious health hazards.

The committee undertook inspection of the areas and noted that the garbage was removed from the locations and arrangements were made not to litter the area further like barricading the area with green mesh, plantation of saplings and sign boards. The establishments and households nearby the vulnerable points were counseled to handover segregated waste to the swachh auto tippers (SAT) and penalties were being imposed on such violators. The committee noticed that warning sign boards were also fixed at those points indicating not to throw the garbage.

It was brought to the knowledge of the committee that earlier there were existing dumper bins and RFC bins in GHMC jurisdiction area as secondary garbage collection points. In order to achieve the garbage free city  - the existing garbage bins were totally removed from the entire GHMC area in a phased manner to encourage collection of waste at source with the use of SAT vehicles as per Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) garbage free protocol.

Note: The report of May 25, 2021 was made available online on the NGT website, June 15, 2021