Four years ago, the Vengaivaasal Village Panchayat won the Centre’s Nirmal Gram Puraskar for ensuring sanitation and awareness of hygiene.
Today, the garbage dumped by the local body on a stretch of the Medavakkam – Mambakkam Main Road is a source of major irritation to both residents of the vicinity and motorists.
The Medavakkam – Mambakkam Main Roadlinks two arterial roads – Velachery Main Road at Medavakkam and Vandalur – Kelambakkam at Mambakkam Village. For more than a year now, the Vengaivaasal Village Panchayat has been dumping nearly all the garbage generated within its limits on an open space on the margins of Mambakkam Main Road.
The subsequent non-stop burning of trash leaves behind a layer of soot on houses and residents, especially senior citizens, complain of severe air pollution.
For motorists, many of whom use this road to travel from Medavakkam to Kelambakkam, Tirupporur and even Mamallapuram, the visibility comes down drastically, especially early in the morning and in the evening.
This has caused a great deal of difficulty also to residents on the nearby panchayats – Perumbakkam and Sithalapakkam.
A little more than 3 tonnes of garbage is generated in this village panchayat every day. While a small portion is dumped beside the community hall on Vengaivaasal Main Road, the rest is dumped on Mambakkam Main Road. “This is a perfect example of what is wrong with the solid waste management practices in village panchayats like ours,” said P.Krishnan, a resident.
People living in recently-constructed apartment complexes say that the worsening of sanitation situation is a recent development. Residents of a gated community nearby said they conscientiously segregated kitchen waste, recyclable waste and non-degradable waste before handing it over to staff engaged in collection. But all this was in vain as all the different garbage was dumped at the same location, they said.
Effective collection and disposal of garbage is among the conditions for being eligible for the award. Kancheepuram district administration officials blamed the poor waste management system on the vacancy in the post of Coordinator, Total Sanitation Campaign scheme at the St. Thomas Mount Panchayat Union.
The block panchayat-level post has been vacant for more than a year. The coordinator from a neighbouring block, which already has 50 village panchayats, is in-charge of St. Thomas Mount Block.
Keywords: sanitation, awareness og hygienne, garbage, garbage dumping
Take back the award and impose fine on the Panchayat.
Corporation role is very minimum in this, household, industries,Each one of us must start source segragating the waste(i.e. separating Biodegradable and non biodegradable) this is the only possbile, viable solution, corporation can only collect Biodegradable and non biodegradable separatley and process it... So change needed from us and start segregating waste from source
With chennai city expanding ever faster than before with lots of real estates and multi-storey flats. If municipal doesn't come with some solid plan or way to handle garbage/dump/food waste/human waste properly, chennai will become soon a stinking city with this kind of growing population. Idea of recycling should be more advertised in TV/Radio and Demo lessons should be shown in school for childrens below 10 standard on how to separate garbage at their own homees, since everything starts there. Plastic & recycleable gwaste should be separate, food wastes should be separate and other things, currently what i see is, most of the people do is, put all the garbage in one plastic bag, tie it up and throw it out in the corner of street or garbage box and municipal taking it up and burning it, is no good. Hotels and Fastfoods are worse, they carry their waste to next area or street and dump it there over-night.
Its not a laughing matter, Government should start a department for waste management.
I don't live anywhere near the affected area but i would like to express my concern for the society and environment. These issues are serious and reveal the lack of planning and administration at all level. We have problems of this nature everywhere like lack of roads, sanitation, hospitals, schools etc. I wonder how politicians and voters forget these issues when comes to elections at every level. Our system of governance turned highly politicized over the years even at panchayat level. When i read most of media blogs i have the same feeling the same trend among educated readers taking one side or another without addressing the real issues. Unfortunately we have right technology today to tackle problems of this nature. Even money may not be the issue. Instead of agitation and movement are there any way out with participation of citizens?
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