The Hindu : Residents resort to road blockade

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Mar 07, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore

Residents resort to road blockade

By Subha J Rao

COIMBATORE, MARCH. 6. Barely two days after forming a human chain protesting the dumping of garbage in their locality, the residents of layouts on Chettipalayam Road today resorted to a road blockade, incensed by the incessant smoke emanating from the dump.

The locals took this step after a couple of people were reportedly hospitalised late in the night following wheezing attacks triggered by the acrid smoke that lingered on till early this morning.

During the nearly-four-hour agitation, the residents did not allow any garbage lorry inside the sewage farm. Bus traffic also came to a standstill.

They dispersed after the Corporation Commissioner, D. Karthikeyan, and the Deputy Inspector-General of Police (Coimbatore Range), Ashutosh Shukla, assured them of action.

Mr. Karthikeyan said that the problem would be solved by Wednesday.

"We are negotiating with a non-Governmental organisation on handing over to it, the management of the sewage farm.

"It will also rehabilitate the rag pickers who set fire to these dumps, and rope them in as partners in garbage segregation."

It is generally said that rag pickers set fire to the dumps to retrieve scrap. However, a rag picker working inside the dump alleged that lorry drivers beat him up if he did not set the dumps ablaze.

Though the fire services department had been spraying water on the dumps in a bid to put out the fire, it seems ineffective.

On a visit to the dump in the evening, flames were seen leaping out from more than 10 pits.

While Corporation officials monitoring the work claimed that nearly 20 lorry loads of water had been sprayed, workers at the site put the number at four or five.

They said the water sprayed was ineffective, as it did not go down to the ground level because of the profusion of plastic content in the garbage.

Members of the Kurichi-Vellalore Pollution Prevention Action Committee (KVPPAC), which is spearheading the struggle to have the dump shifted from its present location, said that unlike the human chain, today's blockade was "a spontaneous reaction from the people".

"Two fire engines were sent even last night to quell the smoke. But, that did not improve the situation," a resident said. Umashankar, whose house faces the dump, said his family members felt drowsy all the time because of the fumes.

Meanwhile, at an emergency meeting of the KVPPAC, it was decided to sue the Corporation for damaging public health and also intensify the agitation to shift the dump elsewhere.

"Our stand is simple. We do not want the dump yard here. Does the Corporation have the permission of the Pollution Control Board to do what it is doing?" they asked.

Ever since the Corporation started dumping garbage in the farm, a slew of problems had hit the locals, including fly and mosquito menace and the accompanying diseases.

Farmers in the periphery of the farm complained that nothing grew on their land now. "Even the water sources are terribly polluted. The water in my well is green," a marginal farmer said.

And, in what is seen as an attempt to ensure that the dumps are not set ablaze anymore, police personnel have been deployed in adequate numbers.

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