Solid waste disposal is a major headache for everyone in Kalimpong Municipal workers collect six tones of garbage everyday and dump it at the only dumping site in Kalimpong – Bhalukhop.  This land is sinking too.

Mountains of beauty or mountains of refuse?

Lush green hills, clean fresh air, beautiful flowers everywhere…if there was heaven on earth it was in Kalimpong.  Not anymore.  It is slowly turning into a living nightmare due to the ever increasing heaps of garbage everywhere. Rotting vegetables, plastic wrappers, left over food, bottles, paper litter every corner of Kalimpong.

Whose problem?

This hideous stuff combined with mud and rain makes amost disagreeable sight.  So who is producing all this rubbish?  Ever increasing households, hotels, schools, shops, restaurants all contribute.  We all love to complain about the problem but no one comes forward to do something about it.  Every year some or the other concerned organizations or individuals have campaigns and hold rallies to educate the public about this problem. There was some early interest but soon people were back to their old ways soon.

Citizens and government keep blaming each other for this mess.  Prathivha Rai, a housewife staying near Bhalukhop, says “We have often complained to the authorities about garbage removal. They keep saying we are looking for land to dispose the garbage.”  Man Maya Biswakarma, a shopkeeper, says that it is causing diseases and ill health among people and animals.

Kabadi-pong GT investigates the recycling industry of Kalimpong Thank God…. there are some people who recycle all the bottles, discarded metal, plastic jars and bags and God knows what all we throw away.  They are the ragpickers and kabadiwallahs.   They collect a lot of this non-biodegradable stuff from all over town. We searched for them and finally found them near Haat Bazaar—dark, dingy and congested shops.  They sit amid cartons full of bottles, piles of tin cans and plastic packets.  One of them was separating metal from the refuse using a magnet.   Forty-eight year old Nirgun Tiwari came from Bihar more than 30 years ago. Today he has a kabadi  business. He collects waste material and sells then in Siliguri.  Tiwari says “I earn  about Rs. 200 a day.  During festivals,  I earn upto Rs.4000  also.    But in rainy season, I earn nothing”.Wealth from waste! S.K.Mohammed, another mahajan,  has 10 to 12 workers who collect waste from him.  Then there are the ragpickers who are playing an important role in recycling plastic waste.  Ragpicker Toshir-uddin along with his six sons collects plastic everyday.  They sell it to mahajans at Rs. 5 per kg.”Most of the plastic we collect is from Haat Bazaar.  WE earn Rs.1`0-20 a day only,” says Toshir-uddin.

The municipality cannot deal with this problem adequately.  They have been managing with only one garbage truck since 1945!  Only this year another truck was purchased.  Over six tones of garbage is collected everyday. The municipal workers employed to collect the garbage all over Kalimpong are inadequate.  GT reporters met a senior official in the municipality, who did not want to be quoted.  He laid the blame on the uncooperative public!

Besides domestic garbage, there is the problem of disposal of hospital or bio-medical waste. Everyday the hospital has to worry about disposing used syringes, cotton gauzes, blood saturated bandages and plastic bags.  Dr S.D. Zimba has been working in Kalimpong for the past four years as the municipality health officer in the towns sub-divisional hospital.  Solid waste of the hospital is collected  near autopsy house and then carried by trucks and thrown in Bhalukhop dump,” he says.  The human waste is collected by safai wallahs.   They dig a pit and bury the waste. Eight permanent workers do two trips in a day.  According to Dr Zimba these workers sometimes suffer from Hepatitis B.  The government cannot provide vaccines to the workers as they are expensive.  The only safety measures that the workers take is wearing gumboots and working with spades. 

Dr Suva Ratna Pradhan, a general practitioner of SD Hospital, says:” From May to August, over a quarter of the patients I treat suffer from water-borne diseases like diarrhoea, hepatitis and typhoid.   He also admits that there is no proper disposal of hospital wastes.  Mr Rana Sada, administrative officer of the hospital says: A World Bank loan will hopefully provide an incinerator to burn all the bio-medical waste in the future.