Necklace Road turns into litter street

Ganesh is a worker in the kitchen at lakeside restaurant Eat Street on Necklace Road. Each day, he carries vegetables to his kitchen, all nicely packed in large polythene bags. The vegetables go in the freezer, and the bags go out the window, to join thousands of discarded plastic waste on the fringes of Hussain Sagar.For people living around the rim of the lake, plastic detritus is an everyday sight: empty water bottles, plastic covers, ice cream cups. The lapping waters knock the plastic flotsam together and deposit it on the edges right round the lake. At some places round the rim, large swathes of land have been filled with plastic filth.For official purposes, plastic is banned all along Necklace Road and anywhere on the fringes of Hussain Sagar.Last year, the grandiose Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) declared the surroundings of the Hussain Sagar as a ‘plastic-free zone’.To add its mite to the cause, the Buddha Purnima Project Authority (BPPA) banned plastic in the vicinity of Hussainsagar by the aegis of something called GO 25.As part of the effort to create awareness, small signage was erected along Necklace Road. A few Task Force teams patrol the lakeside playing recorded announcements at NTR Gardens, Secretariat Road, Lumbini Park and Sanjeevaiah Park from 4 pm to 6 pm imploring people and vendors to strictly comply with the plastic ban.But Ganesh, the Eat Street worker, is not aware of it. No one objected to his carrying plastic bags into the surroundings.“Is it really banned?” he asked. The lakeside vendors solemnly say they have almost stopped using plastic bags, preferring paper cups. If anyone pays for violating the ban, it is the vendors. “I’ve switched to paper cups,’’ says G Santosh Kumar, a vendor.“Else we’ll have to pay a Rs 250 a fine. I can’t afford that.’’ Another Necklace vendor said, “We do not litter the place, sir. It’s the people who visit the lake who throw all sorts of things into the lake.’’ Even as he said that, a motorist stopped at a kiosk, bought a Rs 1 plastic water sachet, drank it up and threw it out of the window.Buddha Purnima officials pat themselves, claiming that the plastic ban works 50- 50.“We can’t achieve results overnight. We are happy to have achieved at least 50 per cent of our objective in enforcing the ban,’’ says Sunil Kumar Gupta of the environment wing of HMDA.“We collected around Rs 40,000 by levying fines on vendors in the past few months.’’ The HMDA works with four NGOs and 22 resident welfare associations around the Hussain Sagar in popularising and implementing the ban on plastic usage. Officials claim there has been mammoth response to the ban, with most of the vendors switching to paper bags. 

By Mouli Mareedu

moulimareedu@gmail.com