Environmentalists attached to the Kallayi river Protection Committee have resumed their night vigil as part of the attempts to track people who dump waste in the overexploited river.
A 10-member committee is in charge of the voluntary initiative, which will instantly expose the polluters and hand over them to the police. Leaders of the committee said they would also hand over the details of such persons to the government departments concerned and the media.
“We are compelled to go ahead with this extreme step as no other measures have been found effective to fight this dispiriting trend,” they said.
Litterbugs caught
Faizal Pallikkandy, one of the coordinators of the new move, said the river protection committee had earlier conducted a trial run of the night surveillance initiative and it had helped them catch four litterbugs. Police officials from Chemmankadavu and Panniyangara stations had then extended their support to book the culprits and proceed with stringent legal actions against them, he said.
The plan is to post at least five men at five points along the river side, where the degradable and non-degradable waste dumping is rampant at night. Arrangements are also in place to capture them in camera and produce before the police with solid proof.
Njeliyanparamba effluents
The committee members, who recently convened a meeting to discuss the action plan, said the effluents from the Njeliyanparamba treatment plant were also posing a threat to the river.
“Our conservation programmes will be futile if the district administration does not to take up the issue and find a practical solution,” they said.
The committee has submitted a memorandum to District Collector N. Prasanth seeking his intervention on the issue. In the memorandum, they pointed out that the fisheries resource was the worst-hit in the reckless practice.
