The Clean Cities Competition the Coimbatore Corporation conducted between August 6 and 12 saw conservancy workers, sanitary supervisors and zonal sanitary officers send 17 tonnes organic waste to the dump yard in Vellalore.
The workers also stored segregated dry waste in ward offices to be sold in the subsequent days and the Corporation sent fewer lorries with waste to Vellalore.
The Corporation started the drive after successfully completing the Guinness World Records attempt to encourage conservancy workers and sanitary supervisors and officers to compete to segregate as much waste as possible.
The workers had to go door-to-door to collect waste as wet, degradable waste and dry, non-degradable waste. The bio-degradable waste went to the Vellalore yard and the non-degradable but recyclable waste was kept separately to sell to recyclers.
Commissioner K. Vijayakarthikeyan said that the segregated waste collection went up from 21.82 tonnes on the first day to 95.6 tonnes on the last day. The highest, though, was 129.6 tonnes on August 10.
The sources said that workers allotted to wards went about collecting waste in segregated fashion and that kept up the collection during the week-long drive but thereafter the collection dropped. Sanitary workers and supervisors said that after August 13, the workers, who were part of the championship, returned to other duties such as cleaning streets, removing silt from drains and working in waste collection lorries. This brought down the number of those engaged in the door-to-door collection exercise.
For the momentum to continue, the Corporation must put in place a system that is independent of officials or elected representatives, they said and added that infrastructure and manpower also needed to be improved.
The sources said that if only the Corporation addressed the problem of the shortage of workers, the momentum would continue. And, before that it must engage the non-government and volunteer organisations to create awareness among the residents. The lack of this, they said, turned out to be the biggest challenge.
R. Raveendran, secretary, Residents’ Awareness Association of Coimbatore, said that civic body and NGOs would soon discuss the lessons learnt from the championship to see how they could take it forward. As for the awareness creation, the NGOs would be more than willing to take up the job, he offered.
