“Ente nagaram, sundara nagaram” (My City, Beautiful City) — so goes the song that greets anyone who calls the mobile phones of the city Corporation councillors. At some of the city cinemas, a video of this song is shown before every movie. Currently, these and the aerobic bins and Nirmal units in a handful of wards are the only reminders of the local body’s ambitious waste management project, launched with much fanfare last year.
In those heady early days, clean-up works and setting up of decentralised waste treatment units progressed rapidly, with an aim to declare the 100 wards of the city clean by April. The Corporation could declare only ten wards clean by that month. Two months later, only two more have been added to the list.
With the councillors slowly slipping into election mode in Aruvikkara and with the local body elections coming up soon after, there might not be much work towards ‘clean wards’ in this term of the Corporation.
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Even the state of those wards declared clean is not satisfactory. Open burning of waste is still prevalent in a few areas in ‘clean’ wards like Karamana and Palayam. Waste was being burned right beside the aerobic bins near Karamana bridge on Friday.
Aerobic bins installed at various locations are working fine. One example is the set of bins installed at Attakulangara, near the Erumakkuzhy garbage dump, which was sealed during the launch of the campaign.
“In this ward, Kudumbasree workers visit houses and collect waste. So, we have enough waste to fill these bins.
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“The problem is, a majority do not segregate the waste, despite our requests. They feel that since they are paying Rs.100 every month, those who collect garbage must segregate it too. If this attitude changes, things would be better,” says Vinod, caretaker of the bins at Erumakkuzhy.
The manure that is produced from the aerobic bins was to be sold at low cost to farmers. But there have been no takers yet.
However, in wards where there is no door-to-door collection of waste by Kudumbasree workers, the aerobic bins have not made much a difference. At Jagathy, where the waste dump was sealed and 25 aerobic bins installed, only two are being used now. A shopkeeper nearby said only three or four people bring garbage here on a daily basis. At the far end of the sealed waste dump, waste is being freshly dumped.
The waste collected at the ‘Nirmal’ collection points are currently being given to a private party outside the city, in Kattakada, and to a few pig farms there. Plastic waste is not being collected.
The slackening in pace of the campaign is palpable as not many new initiatives are being seen on the ground and problems have cropped up in the old ones.