The practice of burning garbage in the open continues in many of the village panchayats in the district causing serious health hazards to the people, besides polluting the environment.
Though bins were placed in villages and in residential areas that had recently flourished on the city outskirts, primary garbage collection remains poor due to inadequate workers.
Hence, people dump most of the garbage in the bins that were cleared once in 20 days or a month.
In the absence of garbage dumping yard, the bins were emptied and the garbage set on fire by the sanitary workers or Thuimai Kavalargal at the spot. This leads to serious health issues in our areas, said the people in 46 Pudur Panchayat.
They added that over 40% of the waste is plastic, which is burnt by the workers causing environmental issues. “Plastic ban was enforced from January 1. But, no steps were taken to stop the burning of garbage,” said S. Subramani of Pudur village. He said that apart from burning the garbage in residential areas, the collected garbage were dumped along the roads and set on fire by workers frequently.
Absence of adequate workers and vehicles to collect garbage from households and lack of dumping yards force the civic body to burn the garbage in the open for many years.
With plastic ban to be implemented, these local bodies are yet to come up with a solution for stopping burning of garbage.
