The Rs 1,600-crore Kolkata Environment Improvement Project (KEIP) showed great hope to the city when it was announced five years ago.

It envisaged a clean metropolis, with all open vats being replaced by `dumper placers' and containers. The KMC was supposed to clear these containers regularly by using high-tech smaller vans, and not manually as it happens now.

Special vans were planned for condominiums and highrises. The plan here was to lift the garbage from the doorstep and carry it to the Dhapa dumping ground.

Hydraulic refuge collectors had even collected waste from trash bins in Jodhpur Park for some time. But the process suffered a setback before it could be followed up in other areas. This is not all.

The civic body had been asked to purchase heavy duty compactors for squeezing dry waste. The plan is still on paper, despite the funds being readily available.

True, the KMC introduced door-to-door waste collection, but not the way the ADB had envisaged. The ADB had also sanctioned funds for construction of a new garbage dumping site with a sanitary landfill site and a laboratory facility to segregate the waste, according to pollution norms. "We tried out the direct loading system at Jodhpur Park and Dhakuria.

The corporation planned to extend it to areas such as Park Street, Camac Street, Ballygunge Alipore and Sarat Bose Road but I don't know why the scheme fell through.

Instead, the project officials went for automatic sweepers to clean the thoroughfares without consulting the KMC engineers," said a senior KMC official of the solid waste management wing.