Cash incentive fails to bring forward informants on illegal dumpers

The Thimphu Thromde had earlier informed the public that anybody who informs on an offender dumping waste in areas other than designated area will get 50% of the fine and penalties as a reward.

However, despite rampant illegal dumping of waste all over the city and also the attractive cash reward the Thromde has not receive any complaint on illegal waste dumping in the capital city.

Thimphu District Municipality (TDM), Chief Environment Officer, Tshering Penjor said, “ We have inspectors to inspect the illegal dumping of waste but it is not enough as we need cooperation from public as well to reduce such illegal dumping.”

He said everybody knows that there is illegal waste dumping all around but concrete evidence is required to apprehend the culprits.

“We even scavenge the illegally dumped waste to look for evidence but it is very difficult to get the evidence,” said Tshering Penjor.

“Even though there are rules and regulation but if we are not able to educate people and if people are not responsible than it would be very difficult to manage illegal waste successfully,” said Tshering.

“People should know that they are responsible for the waste and they should know that waste is going to be a problem in society,” he added.

He said, “We try to provide service to the public in a better way but if we want to have a win-win situation than everybody must cooperate and the public should not rely solely on the Thimphu Thromde.”

Tshering pointed out that as there are about 120,000 people in Thimphu, more people means more generation of the waste.

He said, “If we could manage waste in proper way, it will help to reduce the waste in the land fill as our landfill life span is nearing to an end.”

“We might not able to achieve zero waste as waste is generated every time and there has to be reuse and recycle facilities to achieve the target but we might reduce waste down to a sustainable amount,” chief environment officer Tshering Penjor said.

“We are importing everything from outside so we have no authority to instruct the factory that this product cannot be produced and so on,” he said.

Tshering pointed out that people tend to consume more processed food rather than consuming manually prepared food which leads to more waste in society.

He said if there is proper planning than certain portion of waste can be manageable as waste is also a resource.

In order to reduce the waste at source, Greener way is going to construct a transfer station in Olakha to segregate waste to reduce waste going to the landfill and enhance the life span of the landfill.

 

 

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