A few days ago, the SCRWA WhatsApp group witnessed a heated debate about the noise created by a group of scrap dealers in a Block in South City 1.
Many queries were raised about the legality or otherwise of allowing the scrap dealers and about how SCRWA had allowed this. As was mentioned in the group, RWA or anyone else is not authorized to stop anyone from walking into any road of South City 1. Many Blocks have guard/s at their gates to dissuade local vendors from entering and although this is being done as a norm, it does not have any legal sanction or validity. South City 1 is not a gated community and as a result all areas (roads, pavements and parks in the colony) are public property.
Through this piece, we would like to clarify a few facts about Scrap Dealers:
• For more than a decade, SCRWA has been appointing a scrap dealer and his team members for South City 1.
• The Scrap dealer pays a monthly amount to SCRWA in leu of this and this amount is reported as revenue in the Account Statement. This amount has been reduced significantly since COVID times, as most residents made their own arrangements for disposing off their household scrap and the dealers now find it difficult to recover any amount committed to the RWA. As a result, South City-1 had no authorised dealer from June to October 2023.
• In October, the name, photograph and mobile number of the authorised scrap dealer and his team members had been circulated in the colony WhatsApp groups and these people can be called at any time during the day if any resident wants to sell scrap.
• Apart from calling the scrap dealer by appointment, the Scrap dealers are only authorized to enter the colony for three hours on weekend mornings (Saturdays and Sunday – 10am to 1 pm) to collect scrap without a prior appointment.
• This agreement with the scrap dealer does not in any way impinge on residents’ rights to sell their scrap to any other person or dealer.
We would request all South City1 residents to cooperate in this regard.
