File picture of biomedical waste dumped on the outskirts of a city

Bhubaneswar, April 25: The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) today issued notices to over 100 hospitals and nursing homes in the city to avail the benefits of express cleaning service (ECS) to ensure proper disposal of waste.

Under the ECS, the BMC would collect the waste generated by these healthcare bodies after the payment of a specific fee. The waste is supposed to be dumped at a designated place near Bhuasuni. As per the notice, healthcare bodies have been given a deadline of May 10 to comply with the rules.

The notification, according to senior BMC health officers, was issued following a directive by Orissa High Court asking the civic body to ensure proper disposal of solid waste emanating from the city’s hospitals and nursing homes.

“All major hospitals have already included themselves in the drive, but many smaller ones are not paying heed to our notices. So this notification was issued today and, after the deadline strict action will be initiated according to provisions under the Orissa Municipal Corporation Act, 2003,” said city health officer Ashok Kumar Panda.

BMC sources said as per an old estimate of December 2010 there were 140 healthcare delivery institutions in the city. However, their numbers would be much more now. But till date only 25 were registered under the ECS.

The ECS service for hospitals and nursing homes is fixed at Rs 4,000 per month.

BMC officials also added that a nursing home, in the past, was found releasing sewerage water into storm drains.

The civic body adopted a tit-for-tat method then and dumped garbage near the entrance of the nursing home on March 25.

In a similar move last January, the BMC officials had deposited garbage in front of an apartment complex in Unit IX area for violating civic rules.

Panda said: “For now we will be concentrating more on hospitals and nursing homes to ensure their participation in the express cleaning service. These institutes generate more wastes and dump them near their premises as they have employed private cleaning services for bio-medical waste disposal. Secondly the city has already initiated the ambitious Clean Bhubaneswar Campaign since April 17. So the issue has become more vital now.”

Apart from the hospitals and nursing homes, the ECS is also applicable to apartments, hotels and restaurants. For apartments the number of flats per block decides the charges for ECS fixed by the BMC health officials.

While for less than 50 flats the charge is Rs 500 per month, it reaches Rs 2,000 for a block having more than 200 flats.

But regarding the number of apartment complexes in the city the health officials have no clue.

“As per an old estimate there were nearly 300 apartments, but now it could be more than 500 or even more. But till date only 67 apartments have been included under the cleaning service. We need to have a fresh survey to know actually how many apartments are there in the city,” said a sanitary inspector.

Just like the apartments, there are around 200 hotels and restaurants including common eating joints or dhabas.

However, while there are eight star category hotels in the city as per BMC calculations, other smaller ones are categorised as A, B and C types.

“But the number of eateries are increasing day by day and they are not yet included in the calculation. If we could include all the eating joints, then the collection will be more. The fees collected from the hotels and restaurants vary between Rs 2,000 and Rs 6,000,’’ added another officer.