ANNOUNCEMENTS
The Jamshedpur Notified Area Committee was founded on 1926, in the pre-independence era as an urban local body (ULB) to cater to municipal services in the Jamshedpur Area. The ULB initially dispensed its services with respect to maintenance of birth and death records of the citizens enrolled within the municipal limits of Jamshedpur city and overseeing technical services like civil engineering works, building planning and construction, provision of birth and death certificates and other city related functions like maintenance of roads, bridges, pavements and street lighting infrastructure.
In later years the ULB started dispensing services with respect to solid waste management, in accordance to the solid waste management rules passed in 2000 and their subsequent amendment in 2016. The Swacch Bharat Mission department of JNAC was set up in the year 2015, which saw the launch of the Swacch Bharat Mission by the honorable Prime Minister of the nation, Shri Narendra Modi and subsequent initiation of Swacch Survekshans which included rankings of cities participating in the drive based on aspects like cleanliness, sanitation and solid waste management. This department has left an indelible mark on the performance of the city with Jamshedpur improving its ranking from 30 in the Survekshan of 2018 to 15 in the 2019 Survekshan. Notably, Jamshedpur had achieved a state rank of 1 within Jharkhand.
The year 2019 saw the introduction of a comprehensive door to door collection drive within JNAC‟s municipal area of 65 kilometer square with the acquisition of a fleet of 65 TATA Ace light commercial vehicles fitted with hydraulic tipper containers to collect dry and wet waste from all households within the designated areas under the ULB‟s control. While the initiative has helped in tackling the growing waste in the city, there are still many areas for improvement in the current scheme. Field observations and literary sources suggest that a huge chunk of the project budget is spent on maintaining the fleet of garbage collection trucks, their operation and maintenance and handling running costs. Moreover, the running of these trucks leads to carbon emissions which add to the growing issues of global warming and climate change. Jamshedpur being an industrial city has many manufacturing units that belch smoke, chemicals and pollutants into the atmosphere. The pollution index of the city was calculated at 56.02 with Air Quality index ranging between 78-153. PM 2.5 air pollution was pegged at 42.2 Õ½g/m3 as of 5th August, 2019. This has been dubbed as “Unhealthy for Sensitive groups”. Apart from polluting the air, the system of using trucks for door-to-door collection of garbage sometimes proves to be ineffective in areas with narrow streets, high congestion and high density areas. Thus this project aims to provide some suggestions and improvements with the current scheme that would mitigate the issues of accessibility and reduce emissions while at the same time bringing about reductions in the operation and maintenance costs. This includes an alternate mode of collection, setting up of intermediate collection points and dedicated transfer stations and optimization of the routes used for collection using a combined approach of operations research and network analysis using GIS. Lastly this project shall also aim at providing some suggestions regarding the incorporation of waste-collectors and rag-pickers in the waste collection process, according them roles that shall ease the pressure off the ULB and also generate employment opportunities among the informal sector workers.
Key words: - solid waste management, swacch bharat mission, collection and transportation, door-to-door, route optimization, operations research, Network Analysis, informal sector.
