Several city councillors, mainly from the opposition United Democratic Front and the Bharatiya Janata Party, have accused corporation health officials of apathy in addressing garbage menace.
At a meeting of the council on Monday, UDF’s Panniyankara ward member N. Nirmala said that corporation’s waste collection vehicles were not taking household garbage from her ward. Often, Kudumbasree workers had to wait for long for these vehicles to dispose of the garbage.
V. Rahiya of the Congress complained that the corporation vehicles never passed through Elathur, a grama panchayat which had been merged with the corporation recently. BJP’s Satheesh Kumar alleged negligence of the health officials especially when the issues were involved with merged grama panchayats such as Beypore.
Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) member C. Abdurehiman said officials usually neglected the wards that were thickly populated and coastal areas including Mukhadar. Clogged drains in these wards had become an eyesore, he said.
BJP member Nambidi Narayanan said cleanliness drive should be taken up on a massive scale before the situation went out of control.
IUML-backed independent member S.V. Syed Muhammad Shameel, who represented Areekakd ward of the erstwhile Nallalam-Cheruvannu grama panchayat, said the city was sitting on a powder keg of health crisis.
Pointing out the hidden dangers before the approaching monsoon, Thomas Mathew of the Janata Dal (United) demanded that the health officials take notice of the quality of water served at petty shops and restaurants located on the beach.
Claiming that Kozhikode was cleaner than most other cities in the State, CPI(M) leader M. Radhakrishnan said outbreak of Nipah virus infection should not be connected to the reported dumping of garbage in the city. Many incidents had been blown out of proportion, he said.
Mayor Thottathil Raveendran said the corporation alone could not combat littering of garbage in public places. The wholehearted cooperation of the residents and shopkeepers was necessary to resolve the problem, he said.
