Eight new movable compactors to transport solid waste from Salt Lake and other parts of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation (BMC) area to the Dhapa dumping yard were pressed into service on Tuesday.

Garbage spilling over on roads and footpaths is a common sight in Salt Lake and other parts of the BMC. These vehicles promise to reduce the stink and improve the sight of such areas.

A state urban development department officer said the lack of an adequate number of vehicles to transport solid waste to Dhapa and the closure of the waste disposal site at Mollar Bheri, where Salt Lake’s waste used to be disposed of, had compounded the problems.

The BMC had 12 vehicles to transport the solid waste before the induction of eight more in its fleet on Tuesday.

The BMC wards that will benefit are 2, 4, 5, 7, 28, 29, 36 and 41.

Wards 28, 29, 36 and 41 are in Salt Lake, while the remaining ones are in other parts of the BMC.

Even 20 vehicles may prove to be inadequate to transport the waste daily, admitted state government officials.

There are 41 wards in the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation.

Debraj Chakrabarty, the mayoral council member in charge of solid waste management at the BMC, said the civic body has already floated tenders to procure additional movable compactors.

“Each ward will have one vehicle. We will remove all vats and make Salt Lake a vat-free city,” he said.

Officials said Mollar Bheri is closer to the BMC area than Dhapa.

“A BMC vehicle could do four trips to Mollar Bheri to remove the waste daily, but they can hardly complete one trip to Dhapa in a day. Besides, there is often a long queue of vehicles at Dhapa,” said a civic official.

During the monsoon, a single trip to Dhapa takes between four and five hours. The place allotted to Bidhannagar is an uphill climb on the hillocks of waste at Dhapa, said an official. The solid waste from 144 wards of Calcutta is thrown at Dhapa. Besides, garbage from Panihati Municipality is also disposed of at Dhapa.

Chakrabarty said the long-term plan is to collect segregated waste from households and send the biodegradable and non-biodegradable wastes to two different places.

“The state government is setting up a facility at Patharghata in New Town, where the biodegradable waste will be taken. We will set up one material recovery facility (MRF) for three wards for dry waste. The waste will be directly sent to the recyclers from there,” he said.

The situation is worse in parts of the BMC outside Salt Lake, said Pranay Ray, the chairperson of Borough II, which has six wards covering areas like Baguiati, Teghoria and Hatiara.

Salt Lake is a planned city, while other places are not so well planned. The problem of garbage spilling over is more acute in those places, said Ray.