Delhi government hospitals yet to comply with biomedical waste disposal rules

The union environment ministry had last year extended its deadline for compliance with the new rules for handling biomedical waste till March 27, 2019. Delhi government hospitals and dispensaries are yet to get the mandated barcoding for tracking such waste.

The Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) issued an ultimatum to all non-bedded healthcare facilities to obtain authorization by April 25, under Bio-medical Waste Management Rules 2016. For the illegal dumping of bio-medical waste in Barapullah Nullah, the DPCC also imposed Rs 5 lakh as environmental compensation charge on SDMC, PWD, and the district-level monitoring committee (South East).

The problem in Delhi is that there are just two common biomedical waste-treatment facilities and their areas are demarcated. Currently, only 10 Delhi government hospitals are getting the registration done while the rest of the hospitals will try and get it done as soon as possible. The procedure is being undertaken as the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has already asked the state governments to share their login ID and password for tracking the biomedical waste. The common waste disposal vendors have already installed the required barcoding. CPCB tied up with a company for the software and the barcodes and has to set up a website for the data. North Delhi Municipal Corporation’s six hospitals have already implemented the system. Now, the disposal bags from them that are already barcoded are able to be tracked. The central government-run Safdarjung Hospital has designed its own system. Safdarjung was the first to comply with the biomedical waste rules. At that time, the vendor did not have a barcoding system.

Smaller nursing homes and clinics are also yet to comply with the rules. The smaller facilities also have not switched over to the non-chlorinated bags. Most of the big hospitals have started using non-chlorinated bags. The mixed bags result the emission level going higher.