Delhi govt focuses on IT waste hazard

Getting rid of unwanted IT infrastructure is possible, one of the most
important concerns running in the minds of IT decision makers at most of the
organizations and this concern is primarily driven by the fact that after more
than 24 to 36 months, PCs have lost nearly all their economic value. That's
why some experts say the first step for government as one of the largest users
of IT infrastructure is to formulate what's known as an asset-disposition
program in reco-gnition of that reality.

Delhi government is possi-bly one of the few governments which is serious
about IT waste hazard and has just issued a policy specifically focusing on
condemnation of IT equipment and its disposal.

"There is the perception that all that equipment still has some value.
In a lot of cases, there is no value. Poor or no resale value is the least of
the headaches facing organiza-tions that need to retire old equipment-they
must also consider the risks of disposing machines that are lethal repositories
of such toxins as lead, mercury, and cadmium," noted Prakash Kumar,
Secre-tary, government of National Capital Territory of Delhi Dep-artment of IT
and Department of Administrative Reforms.

Despite significant quanti-ties of lead, mercury, cadmium, and other
hazardous substan-ces in computers and television sets, large quantities of
electro-nic waste are ending up in the nation's landfills or storage.

The policy for condemna-tion of IT equipment from Delhi government has taken
into consideration IT equip-ment like-servers, PCs, dumb terminals, printers,
UPS, lap-tops, package software and even technical books and manuals pertaining
to hard-ware and software being condemned.

With India inching towards maturing its IT infrastructure to a different
level, local gove-rnments around the nation have seen this new waste-disposal
problem emerging, they have begun to raise red flags. The question of
manufa-cturer responsibility is now coming to the forefront. As the volume of
electronic waste continues to grow, answers on what to do about it grow
increasingly necessary.

Zia Askari

New Delhi