The private hospitals situated in various areas of the City are openly flouting norms set for managing the bio medical waste generated in these hospitals. Worse enough, the Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC) too is doing a little in disposing the waste off, in accordance to the set scientific guidelines.

What has come to light is that the biomedical waste that is produced in the hospitals is instead handed over to a private company operating from Srinagar that claims to ‘treating’ the waste through a process that remains unknown.

While gathering details about the management of bio-medical at major private hospitals in and around Srinagar, it came to fore that SMC is not playing any major role in disposing off the waste emanating from the private hospitals.

Details revealed that SMC—the organization that is boasting about keeping the city clean and is highlighting the proper disposal and segregation of the waste—is managing only the paper waste that is coming out of these health care institutions.

Sources reveal that SMC refuses to the collect the bio medical waste at the collection points and only collect the paper and non hazardous part of the waste.

SMC, however, collects bio-medical waste from major government hospitals in Srinagar, and whose scientific disposal has been a dream for the corporation and the population.

“The Achan dumping site is a place where SMC is dumping every sort of waste, be it paper waste or the bio-medical waste. There is no question of proper treatment of hazardous waste there and no activity of that sort is happening there,” sources claimed.

According to health experts unscientific way of disposing off the hazardous waste, can lead to serious environmental and health issues of the population living nearby.

Notably, the administrators of different hospitals said that the hospitals are paying the company a good amount on monthly basis for the collection and the proper disposal of the bio-medical waste.

However, the what and how the waste is being disposed off remains a mystery. Experts however, blame the officials of the SMC for risking the lives of the common man here.

“If the SMC is collecting bio medical waste from government run hospitals, why is it shying away from collecting the same from private hospitals,” claimed the experts.

Guest