Five days after the city of Bengaluru stopped clearing its garbage — for the second time in as many weeks — posing a serious health hazard to pedestrians, joggers and school-going children as it attracts rodents, stray dogs and could set off a dengue epidemic as well as the dreaded plague or even SARS — the Deputy Chief Minister and the Bengaluru district in-charge R. Ashok
has finally woken up to the danger of leaving garbage to rot on the city streets, and acted. Faced with the task of getting rid of the mounds of garbage piling up across the city, Deputy Chief Minister R. Ashok prevailed upon the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board to allow the BBMP to reopen the Mavallipura landfill, and asked Board chairman A.S. Sadashivaiah to suggest to control environmental pollution around the dump yards.
At a special meeting with the mayor, BBMP commissioner and officials, Mr Ashok reviewed the state of affairs in the aftermath of the villagers of Mandur protesting against dumping of garbage in their vicinity. Mr Ashok asked the BBMP officials to terminate the contract awarded to Ramky Infrastructure as it was unable to tackle garbage removal. He also suggested that the BBMP should handle waste management at landfills themselves.
BBMP commissioner M.K. Shankaralinge Gowda was asked to deploy two environment engineers at Mavallipura dump yard to keep a check on environment pollution as landfills with untreated and unsegregated garbage can turn toxic and pollute if they seep into agricultural fields and waterbodies.