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Suspended...

  • 14/09/2002

Suspended... • India generates about five million tonnes of hazarduous waste. But systems to manage it are non-existent

Boards fail to even list the guilty, leave alone penalise

Hazarduous waste generating (HWG) units in some states
State Estimated
HWG units		 Licensed
HWG units
(in per cent)		 Sites
for waste
disposal		 Sites
operational
West Bengal 413 15.5 5 0
Rajasthan 174 63.07 5 0
Himachal Pradesh 25 76.9 1 0
Uttar Pradesh 591 71.58 3 0

• Use of effluent treatment plants (ETPs) is a rare phenomenon in India

• In Assam, Himachal Pradesh and Bihar about 50 per cent of the industries with the ETPs do not comply with prescribed standards

Who sleeps on these pollution control boards?

Composition of some state boards
State Total number
of members		 Members whose
qualifications
are known		 Civil
servants		 Other non-
technical
members		 Technical
members
Sikkim 14 13 8 5 0
Tamil Nadu 10 10 7 0 3
Maharashtra 13 10 6 2 2
Andhra Pradesh 15 15 9 4 2
Himachal Pradesh 8 8 8 0 0
Andhra Pradesh 15 15 9 4 2


Expenditure on training spent during the eighth plan
State As per cent of
total expenditure
Bihar 0.084
Goa 0
Karnataka 0
Maharashtra 0
Madhya Pradesh 0.14
Rajasthan 0

• The Sikkim board, which is without a chairperson, has 14 members. Eight of these are from bureaucracy, four are panchayat members and one is a retired teacher

Number of technical staff to polluting units
State Polluting
units		 Technical
staff		 Percentage
Andhra Pradesh 7,521 88 1.17
Goa 248 4 1.61
West Bengal 3,414 85 2.49
Bihar 1,663 171 10.28
Uttar Pradesh 6,441 199 3.09
Maharashtra 9,035 292 3.23

• Neither the technical staff in the boards nor the training they are imparted has any correlation with the size or spread of polluting units in the states

Source: Anon 2001, ‘Report on State Pollution Control Boards’, Planning Commission of India, Government of India, Chapter 3,4,5

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