GUWAHATI, Feb 15 - A national level workshop on �Challenges of Solid Waste Management and Citizens Responsibility for Successful Management� was held on February 12 in the seminar hall of Water Sanitation Support Organisation (WSSO), Public Health Engineering, Government of Assam.
The workshop was organised by NGO Environ and WSSO in collaboration with the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.
The main objective of the workshop was to develop a roadmap on different challenges of solid waste management and the best possible role of citizens for successful management. It also stressed source segregation of garbage.
The workshop was inaugurated by Ashok Das, Secretary, PHED, Government of Assam. Dipak Mazumdar, Chief Engineer, Sanitation PHED delivered the keynote address.
During the technical session, different resource persons spoke on their fields of experience. They included Prof Arunabha Majumder, former professor, Jadavpur University, Kolkata and Director, All India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health; Dr Z Changsan, scientist and zonal officer, Central Pollution Control Board, Shillong; Dr Shantanu Dutta, scientist, Central Pollution Control Board, Shillong; Dr Ajay Kalamdhad, Associate Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Guwahati; Chinmoy Sharma, managing director, North East Green Tech Pvt Ltd and Dr Amarjyoti Kashyap, president, Environ.
The resource persons highlighted the need for citizens� responsibility in successful solid waste management.
The experts revealed that if the prevalent solid waste management practice continues for another 10 years, the coming generation would be surrounded by heaps of garbage and afflicted with garbage-induced diseases. Not just that, all the localities would also be full of unhygienic garbage dumps along with acute waterlogging and flash flood problems.
Dhiman Kumar Choudhury, Chief Executive Officer, Goalpara Municipal Board highlighted a success story about the solid waste management in Goalpara. Dr Amarjyoti Kashyap, president of Environ, urged the citizens to segregate biodegradable and non-biodegradable solid waste at source, not to insert biodegradable solid waste inside plastic carry bags, not to mix non-biodegradable solid waste with the biodegradable solid waste, to avoid burning of solid waste for prevention of release of carcinogenic gases and to avoid the practice of throwing solid waste.