The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Garbage burning continues at Kodungaiyur

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jan 23, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Garbage burning continues at Kodungaiyur

Swahilya

Fact-finding team takes air samples from dumping ground

THE RESIDUE: A Chennai Corporation worker on Monday displays the metal scrap which rag pickers obtain by burning wastes at Kodungaiyur dumping ground. — Photo: M. Vedhan

CHENNAI : People walking near the Kodungaiyur dumping ground, which takes in 1,500 metric tonnes of waste per day from one half of the Chennai Corporation limits, walk with their saree, duppatta or handkerchief covering their nose.

Anyone speaking, or even breathing for that matter, in that atmosphere is bound to inhale suspended particulate matter from the air.

Despite measures taken by the Chennai Corporation to ensure that lorries go two kilometres into the dumping ground to dump the waste and raising walls in front to prevent people from burning the garbage, people enter the ground through other entry points.

"Rag pickers even cross the canal and enter into dumping ground and set the garbage on fire," a Corporation official said.

Showing several baskets of metal including iron and aluminium left after the garbage is burnt — which the rag pickers sell for scrap at Rs. 15 per kg — the official said that despite the measures, the rag pickers manage to get in.

Members of Community Environment Monitoring (CEM), who had organised a fact-finding team with the objective of studying the garbage as a complex problem, have taken air samples from Kodungaiyur.

The samples will be sent to the U.S, for testing and a report on the environmental and socio-economic aspects of pollution should be out in 25 days, Nithyanand Jayaraman, Advisor, CEM programme said.

Dharmesh Shah, a member of the CEM, said that with 5,000 people dependent on picking garbage and recycling them to earn a living, a viable solution was needed to solve the problem of pollution affecting two lakh residents around the dump.

A study by the CEM last year revealed the presence of nine toxic chemicals in the air, he said.

The fact-finding team comprised Dr. C.N. Deivanayagam and Dr. Suchithra Ramkumar from Physicians for Peace, R. Geetha of the Unorganised Workers' Federation, Dr. Karen Coelho, Assistant Professor, Madras Institute of Development Studies and Prof. Thangaraj, Head, Ambedkar Centre for Economic Studies, University of Madras.

A rag picker Nazeer Mohammed and scrap dealer Santhu, from New Delhi's Chinthan, were also present.

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