On Wednesday evening, by the time the lorries had off-loaded in Vellalore the waste they had carried from various parts of the city, the reading at the weighbridge showed that around 1,000 tonnes.
The lorries had carried the waste the city generated on Tuesday, Deepavali.
Sources engaged in managing the city’s conservancy work for the Coimbatore Corporation said that the 939.65 tonnes that reached Vellalore was not different in terms of the quantity of waste the city generated everyday.
It was different but only in the composition as a lot of firework residue and packing materials formed a part of the waste that reached the Vellalore dump yard. To handle the waste, the Corporation had earmarked a space so that the waste could be handled separately.
The sources said that soon after arrival, the Corporation had sprayed water on the waste so as to prevent the residual inflammable materials from catching fire.
On the streets, though, the Corporation through the five zonal sanitary officers had placed additional bins to handle the extra waste generation, if any.
A few officers said that each of them had placed 25 to 40 bins at waste dumping points, alongside existing bins so that it would be easy to transport the waste to Vellalore. And, this had helped because most of the additional bins, kept as reserves to meet such emergencies, were full and they had removed those on Wednesday morning.
The zonal sanitary officers also made sure that the lorries made more trips than they did on other working days to transport the waste from the additional bins. They said that they could not remove all the waste generated on Deepavali-eve because of the shortage of workers. Around 20% waste remained to be removed from the streets and the workers would complete the task on Thursday.
