Chennai Corporation is all set to clear garbage accumulated in unoccupied plots in the city as part of being monsoon-ready. Minister for Municipal Administration S.P. Velumani on Monday directed the civic body officials to remove the garbage in these plots to reduce the risk to public health.
A few years ago, the Corporation had asked over 25,000 owners of unoccupied plots in the city to remove accumulated garbage. The owners were also asked to construct wells and install rainwater harvesting facilities to control mosquito breeding. But most of them did not pay heed.
With the rising cases in vector borne diseases in the suburbs, the civic body is in a scramble to clear the debris and garbage for all plots.
Many of the 471 bus routes and 33,000 interior roads have unoccupied plots that act as mosquito breeding grounds.
In addition to the 25,000 unoccupied plots of land, three lakh overhead tanks, 80,000 wells, 75,000 sumps and 1,894 km of stormwater drains will be cleaned in order to reduce health risk to the public.
Civic body officials will begin inducting volunteers, particularly members of self-help groups and NGOs to create awareness in schools, colleges, offices, industries and residential localities on prevention of water stagnation.
As part of the mosquito control operations, the the civic body has been carrying out fogging along streets.
But the mosquito density continues to be high in many areas.
The quantity of garbage likely to be collected from unoccupied plots is expected to be higher than the average garbage collection in the 15 zones of the city every day.
The civic body collects 5,000 tonnes of municipal solid waste per day.
Garbage collected from these plots is likely to exceed the average collection in 15 zones in the city
