THANE: Even though residents of big housing societies in the lake city were given an additional month by the civic body to start installing waste management systems in their complexes last week, not many have begun this process or have even started considering it.While some residents who find this concept of managing their wet waste expensive and unfeasible are planning to oppose it irrespective of the civic body’s decision to impose fines on them, NGOs dealing in waste management believe that some feel that this deadline extension has made citizens lose faith that the initiative will even commence.“We are ready to segregate our waste and give it to the TMC. However, instead of encouraging this, the civic body is dumping their job of managing waste on us. While we have numerous buildings in our complex we don’t have the space or funds to build such an expensive project. We cannot follow this extreme step and may have to file a PIL,” said Mahendra Deshmukh, a resident of Brahmand.Meanwhile, members of city-based waste management NGO R-Nisarg Leena Kelshikar, said, “The deadline of non-collection of wet waste from big societies that generate over 100 kgs of waste daily will force many large societies to consider, research and eventually begin setting up waste management systems that suits their society.”“However, this extention of deadline has made citizens from many societies feel that the civic body will keep postponing this initiative, like many other projects, and there is no sense of urgency anymore. Despite this, we are planning to approach the TMC for the list of societies so that we can meet with them and start off a waste management initiative suited for their space and budget,” added Kelshikar.While these big societies are sure that the municipal administration’s will not be able to implement this notice even a month from now, civic officials assert that this is the last one month given to citizens to install their wet waste management systems, after which there will be strict action on defaulters.“A large part of the city’s waste management relies on citizen’s participation, and while we will be collecting waste from smaller societies and slums till a system is conceptualised, we expect at least large societies who have the space and means to join in our efforts and help in making the city waste free,” said Balaji Haldekar, medical officer at the civic solid waste management department.“When we had initiated this concept in December, such residents said that they didn’t know how to go about this process on a society level and thus couldn’t go through with it. Keeping this in mind, we not only extended the date but also held a three day workshop where we had called in various NGOs and companies to guide such citizens. Now that they wanted time to install these systems we have given them one more month. We have given them sufficient time and there will be no more deadline extensions,” he added.

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