Jharkhand pollution watchdog to go paperless by year-end

Source: hindustantimes.com

Jharkhand State Pollution Control Board (JSPCB) will go paperless by December this year, which would approximately save nine tonnes of papers annually and over 280 trees every year, officials said.

The board has already made consent to establish (CTE), consent to operate (CTO) and auto-renewal process of CTO online.

Now, it aims to make all kinds of compliances for CTE and CTO, which involves tonnes of papers annually, online. Number of industries in Jharkhand is more than 9,000. Every industry has to submit compliance report either quarterly or half yearly or yearly.

If this happens, Jharkhand would be the first state to introduce online compliance management system, officials said.

“We aim to make all working of the board paperless by the end of the year by introducing online compliance management system. The CTE and CTO processes have already been made online. But the compliance process is still manual, which is now being made online,” said A K Rastogi, JSPCB chairman.

He said he had a discussion with the director general of National Informatics Centre (NIC) for developing a software in this regard on August 19. “Actually, compliance process is yet to go online anywhere in the country. So, a separate software would be required for it. The NIC has agreed to do the job,” he said.

“Once it is completed, we will make establishment matters online, the last process to make the board paperless,” he said.

The CTE and CTO processes were made online in 2015. However, several features were added to it over the past couple of years. This year, the board has introduced auto-renewal process for a consent to operate (CTO) for industries in the state under the Ease of Doing of Business (EoDB) initiative.

Now, industries do not have to face closure of their units due to delay in getting CTO from the pollution board. CTO is given to industries falling under categories of green (less pollution potential), orange (pollution potential) and red (critically pollution potential) for a certain period of five years, 10 years and 15 years as per the industry requirements.

Now, the green, orange and red category industries having investment up to Rs 5 crore will get automatic renewal of CTO for a year without any scrutiny. However, to avail the facility, industries will have to upload all required self-certified documents on the board’s website and pay the certain fees before 69 days of previous CTO’s expiry date.

The board has also decided to issue a unique identification number to Jharkhand industries for keeping a tab on their past records. It would also help industries to go paperless, as all documents would be uploaded in the board’s website.

Jharkhand’s anti-pollution board offers 50% off on hospital registration fees

Source: hindustantimes.com

In a bid to deal with biomedical waste hazard in Jharkhand, the state pollution board on Tuesday held a meeting with the government authorities as well as private health service providers in Ranchi.

Jharkhand State Pollution Control Board (JSPCB) has come up with several offers to woo the hospitals, nursing homes and clinics to get their institutions registered with the board at the earliest.

The board has slashed fees for consent to establish (CTE), consent to operate (CTO) and authorisation by 50%, said JSPCB chairman AK Rastogi. “The offer is applicable for only two months. After August 31, the relaxation will be withdrawn,” he said.

For example, authorisation fee for the hospital having up to four beds is ?1,000 annually. If hospital takes authorisation by August 31, it will have to pay ?500.

Similarly, hospitals having bed capacity of more than 200 have to pay ?6,000 annually, while the actual fee is ?9,000 to ?11,000. JSPCB member secretary Rajiv Lochan Bakshi said that the board would prohibit the operation of individual or private incinerators and the wastes of hospitals in periphery of 70-km radius would be treated at a common bio-medication waste treatment facility (CBWTF).

Bakshi said that two CBWTFs, one at Ramgarh and another at Lohardaga, were functioning. The CBWTF of Saraikela-Kharswan would start functioning very soon, while three more CBWTs are proposed and will be coming up in Dhanbad (Sindri), Ramgarh and Santhal Paragana.

The hospitals have also been asked to establish sewage treatment plants and effluent treatment plants by December 2019.

The pollution board officials said if hospitals failed to get them registered with the board, they might have to face legal action. As per the provisions under Section 15 and Sub-section-1 and Sub-section-2b of the Environment Protection Act, 1986, the defaulter could face five-year jail term or ?1 lakh fine.

Jharkhand’s most hospitals, nursing homes and clinics are not registered with the board so the latter doesn’t have actual figure of bio-medical waste generation. As per the Bio-Medical Waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 2016, every health care centres, be it government or private, should be registered with the board.

Notably, the meeting was called a day after the report, highlighting the problems of bio-medical waste in Jharkhand, was published in HT on Monday.

As per a survey conducted by Delhi-based environmental group Toxics Link and Ranchibased NGO Lok Swar in 31 government and private hospitals of Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Dhanbad, Bokaro and Deoghar, found that these hospitals produce around 4,700 tonnes of bio-medical waste annually but 59%, around 2,700 tonnes, are left untreated and turns out to be harmful.