The Coimbatore Corporation began on Thursday the door-to-door collection of garbage in three of the nine model wards where it wanted to test primary collection, a key component of the Rs.96-crore Integrated Solid Waste Management Programme.
People should store biodegradable waste in green bins and non-biodegradable waste in white bins and hand these over to the Corporation’s pushcarts that would come to each house in these wards in the morning.
Coloured bins
The Corporation had already provided a green and a white bin to each house in the model wards. The door-to-door collection was started in the Ward 63 of Mayor R. Venkatachalam (in Saibaba Colony-K.K. Pudur area) and in Wards 43 and 49. The Mayor, Assistant City Health Officer R. Sumathi, officials and councillors were present.
Along with the health wing officials and workers, 150 student-volunteers from Avinashilingam University went on a day-long sensitisation on the entire exercise – from segregation of waste to handing it over to the Corporation worker.
Dr. Sumathi said two student-volunteers were assigned to each street in the wards. They spoke for 15 minutes at each house on segregation and safe disposal. This exercise would be carried out on Friday and Saturday also.
On Sunday, the volunteers would watch whether people stored segregated waste at home and handed it over only to the Corporation workers. The Corporation’s health officials would collect a fine of Rs.10 from those who dumped garbage on the road or elsewhere.
Next week, this exercise would be taken up at Wards 23, 24 and 25 with volunteers from Nirmala College and then another four-day programme would be carried out at Wards 6, 3 and 16 with the participation of volunteers from PSGR Krishnammal College for Women.
A continuous monitoring would be done by the Corporation in all the model wards, even after the four-day exercise was over in all these areas, the health officer further said. The awareness generation would also continue. The Corporation had already constituted a ward-level Participatory Committee to oversee the implementation of the programme.
The committee comprised the ward councillor, sanitary inspector, assistant and junior engineers, representatives of the residents’ welfare association and the hospital, college and school in the locality.
Representatives of the eco-clubs in the schools and colleges were also members. The committee would meet every 15 days to discuss the progress of and the problems in implementation. The purpose of a sustained monitoring was to identify problems. For instance, some new residents had come to the model wards without the green and white bins.
Tenants
Some said their previous house owner had asked them to leave the bins behind for the next tenants. Others said they had come from other cities where this programme was not being implemented. Dr. Sumathi said people on transfer from another city could approach the ward office of the Corporation for the bins.
As for those shifting houses within the city, their house owners should allow these people to take the bins with them.
The house owners could approach the ward office for bins for the new tenants. The garbage collection workers had been provided with a route map of each ward. The map indicated clearly through which streets the push carts should enter and exit the ward. The door-to-door collection would be done from 6.15 a.m. to 10 a.m. “If the garbage collector does not come on a particular day, this will be announced by the sanitary inspector through a mega phone. He will ask the people to store the waste for another day. But, this decision will be taken only if an alternative worker is not found. And, this will be only a very rare instance. Mostly, the Corporation will have another worker stepping in,” Dr. Sumathi said.
But, if no alternative worker was found, people could either store the waste at home or dump it in the green and white community bins kept on the streets, she said. On no account should non-segregated waste be dumped in the open.
