Sometime ago - January-February this year, to be precise, the Coimbatore Corporation attempted to tidy the city. Aside from cleaning streets, drains, main thoroughfares and market places, the Corporation placed hoardings across the city highlighting Central Government Swachh Bharat programme and need for a clean city.
The reason the civic body did so was that it was competing with other cities to be the cleanest by participating in the Central Government’s Swachh Sarvekshan programme - cleanliness ranking for Swachh Bharat cities.
A Central Government-nominated team was in the city and coinciding with their visit, the city administration had undertaken the aforementioned works.
In addition to doing the above, the Corporation also placed small bins across the city - mostly on arterial roads and market places. The small bins - roughly of 200 litre capacity - were on NSR Road, Raja Street, Oppanakara Street and even Avinashi Road.
The Corporation said it had procured 2,000 such bins at ₹30 lakh and placed it on busy streets so that they did not hinder vehicle movement and helped in waste collection.
After the team left the city and Corporation secured the Swachh Sarvekshan ranking, most of the bins are missing from the streets.
Sources in the Corporation admit that the civic body had procured the bins at the time of the Swachh Sarvekshan ranking to improve score but had to remove those to safety fearing theft.
The bins, unlike what is normally found on the city streets, are small and could be easily taken away.
The ones the Corporation uses everyday are bigger - they can hold 0.3 tonnes, 0.5 tonnes, a tonne and two tonnes of garbage.
The newly procured bins are now at various ward offices and zonal offices, barring very few ones on NSR Road, Oppanakara Street, Vysial Street and Raja Street.
The sources say that the other reason for the Corporation withdrawing those is that each of the traders on commercial streets and in market has started demanding those. But it is not the job of the civic body to provide those.
Until further instructions, they have kept safe the bins at their offices, the sources say and add that they will put to use those in the next few days as the Corporation gears up for segregated waste collection from June 5, in keeping with the Central Government’s directive.
