With his multiple companies in different areas of cleaning – equipment, housekeeping, car wash, etc, – running very successfully today, a leading cleaning industry professional has once narrated how decades back when he decided to pick up the ‘broom” he was ridiculed and advised against choosing a wrong career option. Situations have changed now; not only have business avenues for cleaning equipment/ products & services opened up manifold, the job of cleaning itself has become part of the national mission. There are entrepreneurs investing in start-ups, there are innovations & apps and above all government imposed regulations, especially in waste management.
However, as MMani Iyer of Vigours Group, an eightyear- old facility services company says, even though the awareness for maintaining cleanliness has increased, there is still resistance by the client companies to allocate the needed budget for cleaning activities. We can have cleaning companies with passion, but the challenge is in working out the financial viability.
Coming to the government role in imposing waste management regulations, most of the States are putting in place very strict segregation and processing rules. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation recently gave its nod to the proposal making garbage segregation mandatory for all existing residential and commercial societies. The decision came in the wake of orders from Bombay High Court and the State government to make provisions for waste segregation at source, recycling of dry waste, and composting of wet waste. According to the proposal, all small housing societies will have to process their wet waste within their compounds.
In Thiruvananthapuram, the civic body is enforcing registration of service providers for waste management to ensure uniformity in service charge. Only those agencies registered with city corporation will be authorised to conduct services in households. The North Delhi Municipal Corporation proposes to charge `50-150 as user fee for door-to-door collection of garbage. The user charges have to be implemented as part of the Solid Waste Management (SWM) Rules, 2016. The policy has already been implemented in Rajasthan.
Meanwhile in Bengaluru, the waste collectors can take help from Waste Samaritan, a waste monitoring solution that tracks the segregation patterns of households. Devised at the Reimagine Waste hackathon at IISc in April 2016, the Waste Samaritan app is being piloted to monitor 250 families in Domlur through QR codes placed outside their homes.
All in the hospitality community are eagerly waiting for the 2nd International Housekeepers Summit scheduled for September 8-9. What started last year with five countries participation, has grown to 11 countries this time. IHS2017, Asia’s largest gathering of hospitality professionals will not only have General Managers, Purchase heads and laundry managers but also engineers, chefs, IT heads, students, academicians and government officials. Be there to learn and have fun too.
Mangala Chandran
editor@virtualinfo.in
