Strategic Action Plan - International Environmental Technology Centre

Strategic Action Plan Report
Consultancy will be essentially to kick start commencement of the priority Schemes and at the same time
take on Capacity Building of the PMC staff at the Health Department. The Consultancy support will
therefore be in a tapered format and will gradually reduce over four years as the internal capacity of the
Health Department will improve.
Some of the schemes proposed in the ISWM Action Plan hinge on Public Private Partnerships (PPP). In
specific, PPP formats have been suggested for segregation and collection, decentralized as well as
centralized treatment and towards establishment and operation of waste recycling centres. This approach
will indeed bring a different partnership culture to the present Health Department. The ISWM Cell will
be required to play an important role of the “change agent” in the entire process.
While the ISWM Cell will play a lead role in managing the implementation of schemes in partnership, it is
important that internal reorganization and reforms be carried out at the end of PMC to develop the
needed enabling framework. Some of the institutional changes that may be considered could include
• Organizing Health Department with dedicated SWM related cells for key functions such as
– Route planning and container placement
– Coordination with Primary Collectors i.e. Ragpickers
– Citizen Outreach
– Management of Specialized Waste (household e-waste, hotel/restaurant waste, garden
cuttings, etc)
– MIS and Reporting
Such an approach will help in building as well as bringing in specific expertise. A separate SWM
department may be considered over a period of time, especially during the mid-course of the
implementation of the ISWM Action Plan.
• Bringing the operational level of ISWM under the Engineering Staff instead of entrusting the
operations to the Ward Medical Officers.
The implementation of the SWM functions of Pune is undertaken by the available manpower with the
Health department. As mentioned earlier, the MSW management of Pune is predominantly managed by
the health department officials. The senior officers are qualified medical doctors and most of them have
specialization in public health. The sanitary inspectors along with their team work at the ward levels for
managing the SWM activities. There is relatively low engineering department support. At the landfill also
the operations are handled by the staff from the health department.
The Engineering Staff is more familiar with equipment and technologies deployed for solid waste
collection, treatment and disposal and hence operational optimization of the system is more likely in
terms of costs as well as effectiveness. Such a change has been introduced in few Municipal Corporations
such as Mumbai and the results have been found to be beneficial. While introducing such a change, it may
be useful to review the roles of Ward Officers, Ward Medical Officers and Zonal Officers in SWM to
ensure that there are no overlaps or ambiguities.
• Increasing role of the Zonal Officers in SWM – Presently the Zonal Officers have a limited and
overlapping role on SWM with the Ward Medical Officers and the Health Department at PMC:
ISWM Plan for Pune 198