A private marriage venue in Bhubaneswar. Telegraph picture

Bhubaneswar, June 10: Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) has issued notices to all those kalyan mandaps, community halls, restaurants, hotels and other entities that violate solid waste management rules.

They have asked each of these entities to get them registered under express cleaning service to tackle the issue of solid waste management.

Bhubaneswar, with a population of approximately 13 lakh, is seeing rapid growth and industrialisation. This is leading to generation of huge amount of solid waste. However, poor waste management facilities are creating environmental and health hazards for the citizens.

City health office sources said that solid waste management issue had assumed serious proportions in community centres, as most of them were not registered with the BMC through the express cleaning service. Express cleaning system of the BMC helps community halls, restaurants, hotels and nursing homes to dispose solid waste for a monthly fee.

“Many kalyan mandaps, community halls and restaurants organise marriages, community festivities and other gatherings. However, they do not take proper care to dump wastes. This creates an unhealthy atmosphere and the stench emanating from the wastes makes the situation worse. So, this time we have issued notices to the violators and asked them to get registered with express cleaning service first after depositing Rs 500 as registration fee,” said city health officer Ashok Kumar Panda.

“Many times we have also seen people collect money from certain organisations, associations and youth clubs and help them organise community functions at open grounds. As there is no system in place to know how many such organisations are involved in this polluting exercise, we want to make this registration process mandatory,” added Panda.

City health office sources added: “Community centres (except temples) should register their names at the health office. The registration amount of Rs 500 is annual fee for getting them listed. Later with the help of the corporation council and after the rates are fixed, they would have to pay their fees for express cleaning service according to their location and the number of people that can be accommodated on their premises.”

Councillor of ward No.49 Amaresh Jena said: “Apart from community centres, restaurants and hotels dump their wastes in drains and natural drainage channels along Cuttack Road. Though several rounds of discussions have been held, nothing has been done yet.”

Subhranshu Rath, working president of Ashok Nagar Nagarik Committee, said the civic authorities should devise a formula to punish violators who dump garbage and food waste in drains and natural drainage channels.

The BMC had already initiated a survey to know how many private kalyan mandaps were operating in city without proper license. As per BMC records, 28 hotels in the city have facilities for kalyan mandaps and another 42 community centres were paying requisite fees for the use of their premises as community centres.

However, tax officials added that there might be around 50 private kalyan mandaps that operate in the city without license. But the exact number would be known once the survey was over.

Likewise, there were around 200 hotels and restaurants, including common eating joints or dhabas. While there were eight star category hotels in the city as per the BMC records, other smaller ones were categorised as A, B and C types.

“But the number of eateries are rising by the day and they have not yet been included in the records. If we include all the eating joints, then the collection would be more. The fees collected from well-known hotels and restaurants vary from Rs 2,000 to Rs 6,000,” added another city health office official.

“Once the registration process for express cleaning service is over, the civic body would get to know the exact number of community halls, restaurants, hotels and open spaces where community gatherings are organised. The fees collected through express cleaning service would increase the earnings of BMC,” said Panda.