Bhubaneswar: The civic body is working on war footing to ensure complete scientific management of solid waste and declare the city free of garbage by coming October.

The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) will come up with a month-wise action plan keeping in mind the Swachh Bharat Mission deadline of October 2, 2019,

The civic body will make efforts to set up the proposed compost plants and waste-to-energy plant and also ensure segregation of waste at source and also take steps to reduce the burden on the existing dumping yard.

"We will convene a meeting with our officials to draft out the action plan for first month, which will take shape from next month. We will then amend the plans after ascertaining the outcome of the first month's activities. We will gather as many people as we can to achieve the targets," said a civic body official.

The decision came on the backdrop of a direction from the Union ministry of housing and urban affairs where it has asked the city administration to concentrate on scientific management of solid waste instead of only taking steps to declare the city free from open defecation.

"We are likely to achieve the national open defecation free target before the end of the mission. However, solid waste management continues to pose a challenge and we need to expedite our efforts in this area in a very focused and concentrated manner in the remaining one and half year to achieve the objective of ensuring 100 per cent scientific management of municipal waste," reads a direction issued by the civic body.

The ministry has also prescribed components based on which the civic body could draft the action plan. It includes taking steps to change the behaviour of the citizens to undertake source segregation of waste, reducing the burden on the dumping yard, proper collection of construction and demolition waste and collection of users fees from the citizens among others.

"The direction and the guideline of the ministry will definitely help us come up with our specific plan. Our officials have already swung into action to prepare the plans and take up the activities. We will take help of our cleanliness agents and voluntary organisations if required," said mayor Ananta Narayan Jena.

The municipal corporation has provided colour-coded dustbins to ensure segregation of waste at source. It has also been taking steps to set up five compost plants at its temporary dumping ground near Sainik School. There are also plans to set up a waste-to-energy plant at its designated dumping yard at Bhuasuni.

"Plans are good. But there has to be ground-level implementation. The city has improved in cleanliness parameters, but there is still a long way to go. Segregation of waste at source is missing despite providing the colour bins. There has to be a bigger effort to implement such things," said Kanak Mohanty, a resident of Niladri Vihar.