The Bhutanese Leading the way.
The Steel Community Bins (SCB) which were placed at strategic locations around the city by the Thimphu City Corporation (TCC) have been removed since they failed to serve their purpose.
Currently, only places like the hospital area, the IMTRAT compound in Babesa and the vegetable market continue the use of these steel bins.
According to municipality officials, residents using the bins did not dispose their waste properly and a mess was seen created around the areas with stray dogs scavenging for food and leftovers.
However, even after the bins were removed, people continue to litter the areas.
TCC has no fool-proof solution to this but say that residents will now have to manage with the garbage van service every alternate day.
A Thimphu resident, Damchoe Tshering said,”We don’t know when the garbage van arrives because sometimes it doesn’t show up.”
But the Mechanical Transport Officer (MTO) for TCC, Tashi Tshering feels that people are less careless when vans are send on time.
Some civil servants complained about the arrival of the garbage vans coinciding with their office timings but the MTO said that TCC is planning to schedule the garbage vans to go about their rounds towards evening and on weekends soon.
Meanwhile, the city corporation is also planning to privatize the garbage dumping or collection with the market place to be the first area to have a trial run.
Besides this, TCC’s waste management pilot project launched sometime back is still being implemented in Chubachu and it will be covering the Motithang area soon. This project saw the distribution of two garbage bins – one each for organic and inorganic waste.
But if the residents of a particular colony take responsibility for the SCBs, TCC will provide them the same.
Each steel bin costs approximately Nu 75,000.
The smaller bins cost more than Nu 5,000.
Also, if any new building owner approaches TCC for garbage collection service, it is provided to them accordingly.
