Hyderabad, December 13 | Telangana’s Municipal Administration and Urban Development Minister KT Rama Rao said on Monday that the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests has approved 28 MW of waste for the power plant in Hyderabad.
Once commissioned, he said, the plant will take the total capacity of waste to power plants in the city to 48 MW, the highest in South India.
South India’s largest waste-to-energy plant was inaugurated a year ago in the city, he said.
The minister was speaking while flagging off 1,350 Swachh Auto Tippers (SATs) in Sanatnagar. The new SAT vehicles will cover the newly formed sectors. Each tipper can carry 1.5 metric tonnes of garbage. A total of 4,500 SAT vehicles were provided by the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation under the driver-cum-owner scheme.
The set is provided with a partition to segregate wet and dry waste and provision is made for hazardous waste collection. Each auto will cover 450-500 houses.
KTR, as the minister is popularly known, hoped that these vehicles would help GHMC improve efficiency in waste collection and segregation.
He said that with the addition of these sets, the total number of vehicles in GHMC would go up to 5,250.
He recalled that before 2,500 autos were flagged off under the Swachh Telangana programme, the daily waste generation in the city was 3,500 tonnes. With the improvement in efficiency in the provision of door to door garbage collection, transfer stations and dumping yards, the waste generation is now 6,500 tonnes.
KTR said the government is also focusing on recycling the waste by developing the waste into energy projects.
The Minister said that for the last 5-6 years, Hyderabad has got the best ranking among the big cities with a population of more than 40 lakhs under the Swachh Bharat and Swachh Survekshan programs of the Government of India.
He praised the sanitation workers, including the drivers and other employees of the vehicles, who work hard to collect the garbage from 3-4 in the morning.
KTR said that in honor of the services rendered by the sanitation workers, Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao has increased their salary three times during the last seven years.
Animal Husbandry Minister T. Srinivas Yadav, GHMC Mayor Vijaylakshmi Gadwal, Deputy Mayor Srilata Mothe, GHMC Commissioner Lokesh Kumar and other officials were present.
Source: IANS