The Madras High Court Bench here on Monday directed the Madurai Corporation Commissioner and Health Officer to take action on the plea of an individual who wanted the local body to prevent dumping of garbage in a vacant land near his house at Ellis Nagar.
Disposing of a public interest litigation filed by him, a Division Bench comprising Justice R. Banumathi and Justice M. Sathyanarayanan directed the officials to consider a representation made by the petitioner in this regard to the Mayor on February 18 and dispose it off as expeditiously as possible.
In the representation, the petitioner M. Rajendran (61) had urged the local body to keep a garbage bin near his house and depute sufficient number of scavengers for cleaning the locality. He also wanted erection of a board warning people of prosecution if they continued to throw garbage in the open thereby causing environmental pollution.
ADVERTISEMENT
According to him, the locality, named after a British civil servant Francis Whyte Ellis, was formed under a Tamil Nadu Housing Board scheme in 1987. It had row type houses built for different income groups such as low, middle and high. It was brought under Corporation jurisdiction in 2005. The petitioner was residing in the MIG houses and his was the last house in the street. The land adjacent to his house as well as opposite to it were vacant and were used by the local residents as a garbage dumping yard, he said and claimed that his efforts to prevent them led to wordy quarrel. "There is no garbage bin placed in this area scattered with filth, rubbish, animal waste, solid waste and bio-medical waste. It becomes a fertile breeding ground for pigs and mosquitoes. To add to the misery, the wind blows the garbage into my house. Such unhygienic condition leads to constant threat of fever and skin allergy."
Efforts to lodge a complaint through toll-free number (18004258445) as well as landline numbers (2537214 and 2537215) publicised by the Corporation Commissioner through the media went in vain. A complaint made to the Mayor at a special camp for redressing grievances on February 18 too was in vain.