As of December 31, 2017, the Coimbatore Corporation is supposed to have completed its Swachh Bharat work as it gets ready for Swachh Sarvekshan 2018 ranking. This means completing segregated source collection from all the households in 100 wards.
It also means the Corporation equipping conservancy workers with pushcarts and bins for waste collection and vehicles for transportation of the collected waste.
But if officials are to be believed none of this has happened. And, this means that the Corporation has also failed to comply with the directives of the Southern Bench of the National Green Tribunal.
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The Swachh Sarvekshan 2018 ranking, an all-India exercise, assesses Coimbatore and 4,040 cities for the cleanliness drive the respective local bodies carried out in 2017. For 4,000 marks, the Corporation will have to submit a visiting team the work it has executed and the documents containing records of the execution. Citizen feedback will carry 1,200 marks.
Officials say work for segregated waste collection is yet to begin as workers on the ground are handicapped by shortage of pushcarts and bins. In the absence of these, they are unable to cover all the houses. Likewise, in the absence of bins, the Corporation is also forced to collect littered waste from streets.
Sometime ago, the Corporation gave an undertaking to the National Green Tribunal that it will procure pushcarts and bins to step up segregated waste collection. Thereafter, the Corporation sent a proposal to the State Government for ₹7 crore to purchase the over 500 pushcarts, 52 battery operated vehicles for waste collection and over 1,000 bins.
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The officials say that the Corporation has just floated the tender. After it opens the tender at the end of January and finalises the successful bidder, the pushcarts and bins will land by March-April.
By then the Swachh Sarvekshan team will have completed its assessment of the city or will be in the city.
The officials say notwithstanding the arrival of new pushcarts and bins, the civic body has already started the work to step up segregated collection of waste by repairing damaged carts and bins.
As part of the Swachh Sarvekshan 2018 ranking, the Corporation in association with The Arc Foundation, a non-governmental organisation, ranked city schools, hospitals, restaurants and other commercial establishments for cleanliness and released the ranking a few days ago.
The Corporation officials say this will help improve the city’s ranking.
Meanwhile, the MDMK has warned the civic body of a protest if it does not get its act together and start segregated waste collection in 100 wards. The party’s State Youth Wing Secretary V. Eswaran, the petitioner in the case before the National Green Tribunal, says the civic body has been delaying segregated waste collection for long and it is does so, as promised.