A clean environment dominates the air in Eloor as elections to the local bodies are around the corner once again.
“We have created an environment in which people are able to take care of the waste in households in their own premises. Eloor is now clean Eloor now when compared with the town five years ago,” says Usha Gopinath, CPI(M) leader and outgoing chairperson of the municipality.
She said that the biggest achievement of the outgoing council was that it was able to create a culture of people taking care of the waste that originated on their premises.
She said that biopots and biobins as well as bio gas plants were set up in houses to help people to handle the waste from households without burdening the public system.
At the same time, the Green Army or the Haritha Karma Sena had been empowered to collect waste, to segregate it and to dispose of it in a healthy and sustainable manner.
Shajahan Kavalakkal, an election contestant, said that the municipal authorities had not addressed the issues related to the floods in 2018 and 2019. Both years saw dozens of homes being flooded but issues such as silting of the water bodies and drain systems had not been addressed and they remained a big problem for the people.
He said that the closure of several industrial units, including PSUs, had left many people jobless. This had led to restlessness among the youth, he said.
A. D. Sujil, a CPI(M) councillor, said that the municipal authorities had been able to create a culture of sustainable waste treatment. He said that the municipality, home to hundreds of industrial units, was now a cleaner place than it was earlier.
Purushan Eloor, an environmental activist, said that the political parties, now seeking power in the municipal council, should give importance to cleaning up the Kuzhikanadamthodu, which had been at the centre of a controversy on environmental pollution.
He said that the segment of the river Periyar, which flowed through the municipality, needed to be cleaned of the release of waste from industrial units in the area.
