The mobile incinerator, now stationed at the Fort area, is likely to be made fully operational only after all the 10 rectifications suggested by the government’s technical committee are effected.
After all the rectifications were carried out, the technical committee would inspect the incinerator for a third time. The present thinking was to then ask the Suchitwa Mission to take over the machine, Urban Affairs Minister Manjalamkuzhi Ali told The Hindu here on Tuesday. The government was not thinking of handing over the incinerator to any other agency, he said. “I am given to understand that seven of the 10 rectifications suggested have already been done. The rest may also be done shortly. The technical committee has already written to SIDCO asking it to communicate to the company concerned the changes required in the incinerator,” Mr. Ali said.
This position of the government shifts the focus back to the recommendation pertaining to the automation of the garbage feeding mechanism. The committee wants this process to be “fully automated.” It has also recommended that the feeding process be so designed that the garbage falls in the centre of the machine’s primary chamber.
Officials of Chintan Sales, the company that runs the machine, maintained that the feeding process was already automated and that any changes to the feeding mechanism might require a change in the design of the machine itself. How much time would such a change take, they asked. Meanwhile, a move to shift the incinerator to Eenchakkal from the Fort area was put on hold because of a “strong request” made by the local Corporation councillor who wanted the machine to continue operations in the Fort area for some more time. A senior government official told The Hindu that though the incinerator might not be immediately shifted out of the Fort area, it would have to be taken around the city eventually and that the next stop in all likelihood would be Eenchakkal.
