Cuttack: The district administration will soon constitute a monitoring committee for the implementation of Bio-Medical Waste Management Rules-2016, framed by the Central government.
The district administration has recently received a letter from the Central government asking it to implement the newly framed rules for the disposal of bio-medical waste.
Sources said the district collector will be the chairman of the monitoring committee while the chief district medical officer, regional officer of the Orissa State Pollution Control Board, a representative of the Indian Medical Association and members of voluntary organisations active in the field are supposed to be its members.
“The monitoring committee will ensure strict implementation of the bio-medical waste rules in the district,” collector Nirmal Chandra Mishra said.
The district-level monitoring committee will send a report on the management of bio-medical waste to a state-level advisory committee and the OSPCB once every six months. Legal action will be taken against government and private hospitals for violation of the bio-medical waste management rules, sources said.
The OSPCB had earlier initiated criminal proceedings against 19 government and private hospitals across the state for flouting pollution norms while disposing bio-medical waste. A court in Jagatsinghpur had indicted a health official of the district in 2014.
At present, the district administration has no nodal agency to monitor the management of bio-medical waste in 202 private hospitals registered with it. It has been often alleged that private nursing homes are dumping medical waste in dustbins put up by the Cuttack Municipal Corporation.
Several irregularities in the management of bio-medical waste were also reported from the Sriram Chandra Bhanja Medical College and Hospital (SCBMCH) in the past. Sources said SCBMCH authorities had been operating a medical waste management plant for last 16 years without OSPCB’s approval. It was only last year that the pollution watchdog had formally allowed the medical authorities to operate the waste management plant.
“We had applied for OSPCB approval to operate the waste management plant in 2002. But we got the pollution watchdog nod in this regard in February this year,” SCBMCH superintendent Pratap Rath claimed.
According to sources, at least 20 kg of human anatomical waste and around 30 kg of microbiological and biochemical waste are collected from the premier health institute every day.
Post News Network
