Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

City waiting eagerly for waste management programme

K.V. Prasad

Garbage heaps may confront candidates

A MESS: Garbage found strewn along Vincent Road in the city on Tuesday. - PHOTO: S. SIVA SARAVANAN

COIMBATORE: Even as the Coimbatore Corporation talks of de-centralised composting, door-to-door collection of garbage and converting it into manure, heaps of waste along roads may confront candidates during the local body election campaign.

Though the compost yard at Vellalore may not be an election issue this time, there is widespread public resentment over the lack of a solid waste management programme in the city.

Though the Corporation has drawn up a waste management plan to be implemented under a Central Government urban infrastructure scheme, the public are quick to point out that apart from grandiose plans the civic body should pay attention now to smaller yet significant aspects such as prompt garbage disposal every day.

Even as the city awaits the implementation of the scheme, it expects the existing system to be tightened to ensure that garbage does not wait for long on the streets for the conservancy workers.

The Corporation itself is planning night conservancy so that the waste thrown out of shops, especially eateries, do not remain on the roads till the next morning. Another grouse is that the waste removed from the bins or on open spaces is not transported properly in covered trucks.

With not a single road being garbage-free now, stringent rules to deter littering by the public is seen as a major need for the city. On its part, the Corporation feels helpless as elected representatives reject fines and garbage collection fee for residents.

Corporation sources say that despite appeals to the public not to litter the roads or open drainage canals, lack of cooperation from many of them makes sanitation a difficult task for the civic body. Resistance to a fee for door-to-door garbage collection itself points to the lack of cooperation, they say.

The civic body is also clear that centralised garbage disposal cannot continue for long, as the situation at the Vellalore yard has pointed out. But, there is resistance to decentralised disposal through composting at colonies where the waste is generated.

Fear of stench and pollution make people reject localised composting. More sanitary workers to clear garbage till late into the night, a credible door-to-door collection scheme that will encourage people to pay a fee and stringent laws to curb littering are the immediate needs for a clean city.

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