Garbage Woes Resolved: HDMC Commits to Addressing Key Concerns After Protest

Hubballi: A four-day protest led by the Garbage Yard Removal Committee, involving various organizations blocking garbage tippers from dumping waste on the trash yard on Karwar Road, concluded late Saturday night after assurances were given to address their demands.

Congress leader Nagaraj Gouri, the driving force behind the protest, revealed that HDMC Commissioner Dr. Ishwar Ullagaddi visited the protest site near the dumping yard on Saturday night. He agreed to meet several demands, including halting fires to legacy waste, segregating legacy waste and daily collected waste, constructing a compound wall around the garbage yard, resolving the stray dog problem, drilling borewells to control fire spread, employing manpower for waste segregation, and preventing garbage fires.

Gouri declared the protest a success, stating that the decade-long demands related to these issues were finally acknowledged. Starting from Monday (March 11), borewells will be drilled to ensure the availability of water, preventing immediate garbage fire spread. Additionally, five water tanks will be stationed at the site to quickly extinguish fires, and the commissioner pledged to tap soil to the legacy waste, keeping it moist most of the time.

The commissioner committed to deploying 73 civic workers at the garbage yard for waste segregation and watering. Furthermore, 20 workers, who had not received salaries for four months, had their dues cleared. In principle approval was granted for the construction of a compound wall around the garbage yard, with a budget of Rs 3 crore allocated. Once the compound wall is in place, the surrounding areas facing stray dog menace will be alleviated, as the garbage yard, which houses over 2,000 dogs, used to be a source of intrusion.

The HDMC also assured that captured stray dogs would not be released into the garbage yard. The door-to-door garbage collection, hampered by the protest for the past four days, is expected to resume smoothly now that the protesters have withdrawn. Present during the press briefing were Gurunath Ullikashi, Deepa Gouri, Arif Bhadrapur, and others.