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Making CETPs work

  • 14/01/2003

Making CETPs work If cetps are the answer, how do we make them work? The choice of technology, however important, is not the only challenge ahead. The key is to build a much stronger framework for common waste governance.

In Delhi, for instance, a legal framework exists. But it is so convoluted that nobody is clear about specific roles and responsibilities in the management of the waste. For instance, the law gives the cetp users societies responsibility for "setting up and operating a cetp ' in their estate. But it does not give them the powers to set the dues or even to recover unpaid dues from the individual users. The society is toothless. It has to appeal to "authority', a government agency like the industrial development corporation or the pollution control board, to take action against defaulters. This will never work.

On the other hand, if the cetp societies are given powers to take punitive action against defaulters and to ensure effective functioning, the monitoring agency has to make sure that these plants do not become ways and means of circumventing pollution laws. It is, therefore, necessary to do the following:

Firstly, set up the institutional framework

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