A video shot by an unknown person who happened to see a garbage bag being dumped from a van of a Coimbatore-based private hospital at Kunnathur near Annur surfaced on social media Saturday.
The video showed a man saying sorry to the witness and another man putting the garbage bag back into the van. A few garbage bags of similar type were also seen inside the van.
The man, who shot the video, is heard asking the men whether the garbage bag contained medical waste. The men replied that the bags contain only ashes and they also show him burnt garbage by opening one of them.
The video surfaced on a local WhatsApp group on Saturday from where it went viral on social media.
When asked about the incident, the private hospital admitted that the van belonged to it.
The hospital said that the garbage bags contained burnt remains of paper waste generated at the hospital and biomedical waste generated at the hospital are collected and processed by a common treatment facility.
According to the hospital, paper waste was not being collected by scrap dealers since lockdown started and hence it was burning them into ashes using a burner at the hospital. The ashes are later used in a farm belonging to the hospital, it said. “I regret”, replied hospital’s chairman when asked about the incident.
Coimbatore rural police said that they did not get any complaint regarding the incident.
