Long line of garbage vehicles wait for their turn to empty into the transfer station at Jiyaguda in Hyderabad on Thursday, August 21, 2025.
| Photo Credit: V. Swathi
Unbearable stench overwhelms all senses as soon as one steps onto the 100-foot road in Jiyaguda, polluting nostrils, airways and gullet, and threatening to enter even the pores of the skin. One side of the road is the vast expanse of a virtual sludge pool created by the recent floods in the Musi river which flows by. Lying on its back in the sludge is the bloated carcass of a goat, covered in a swarm of flies.
A long line of trolley autos filled with trash collected from the hip and high localities of the city occupy part of the other side of the road. Inside the cabins, fighting the stench and revolt on one side and hunger pangs on the other, wait the Swachh Auto Trolley drivers and helpers, to empty the trolleys into one of the solid waste transfer stations of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation, run by its solid waste concessionaire arm Hyderabad Integrated Municipal Solid Waste Limited.
“This has become an every day affair for the past one month. We wake up at 3 a.m., collect trash from all the households in our locality, and arrive here by 10 a.m. The wait time here is a minimum of two hours. For the past one month, it has increased to six to seven hours,” says H. Ravi, one of the drivers.
“We get to go home only around 6 p.m.,” chimes in Shaik Jaffer Pasha, another driver, “Till then, we have to remain empty stomach. Unless I wash up, I don’t feel like eating.”
“I came at 9 a.m. from Karwan. Till 2 p.m., my turn has not come. My children are starving at home,” says A. Geeta, another garbage collector.
A few drivers are seen making an about turn from the queue without emptying the trolley. They are attempting to either try their luck at the transfer station near the MGBS or dump it at Shivaji Nagar, one of the many unauthorised garbage dumps.
“We cannot wait forever. God forbid I take a day off, the next day would be hell for me. I have to make two rounds to clear all the pending trash, but would be held up here after a single trip,” said Balaraju, another driver.
Inside the transfer station, the excavator arm of an L&T Komatsu machine is busy lifting heaps of garbage into trucks which are headed to the solid waste management facility at Jawahar Nagar. The transfer station receives solid waste from localities as far as Toli Chowki, Karwan, Attapur, Narsingi and even Kokapet.
“The loading chambers are idle, as the power transformer has conked out a few weeks ago. Jawahar Nagar too is jammed. It is taking a lot of time for the trucks to return, delaying the process by hours,” an employee of the transfer station shared.
Sources from Jawahar Nagar confirm that there is a long line of trucks there too, due to bad road conditions, and also owing to the recent two-day strike by the truck drivers. Three to four days is the time needed to clear the unlifted garbage of the two days, the brunt of which the SAT drivers are to bear.
Published – August 22, 2025 07:26 am IST
