With nearly a year left for the panchayat elections, the CPI (M) has launched a campaign on the issue of waste management, which has been a challenging one for most civic bodies in the State.
At a seminar on source-level waste processing organised by the AKG Centre for Research and Studies, CPI(M) State secretary Pinarayi Vijayan exhorted party workers to drum up support among the public for the initiative. According to him, there was sufficient time for local bodies, especially those ruled by the party, to plan and execute local-specific schemes to tackle the waste menace prior to the elections. “As an opposition party, we (party members) have the liberty to implement our planned programmes. At the same time, the local bodies will be able to seek assistances for which they were eligible to from the government,” he said.
Even while saying that most major waste management projects of the government has been non-starters, Mr. Vijayan maintained that there would not be any outright opposition towards such schemes. He added that party’s district units would be in the forefront of the waste management activities taken up in the local bodies. The efforts of the youth, children and women must be roped in for implementing the programmes, he said. Mr. Vijayan added that the party’s State committee had decided to actively intervene in certain other civic issues, but refused to divulge the details.
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Inaugurating the seminar, Leader of Opposition V.S. Achuthanandan said a sanitation drive that had been launched by the previous LDF government could not be carried forward by the current ruling dispensation. He also pointed out that rural areas often bore the brunt of waste generated by the urban areas. This could be seen in the cases of Vilappilsala in Thiruvananthapuram, Lalur in Thrissur, Njeliyanparambu in Kozhikode, Brahmapuram in Kochi and Sarvodayapuram in Alappuzha.
Speaking on the occasion, CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said the role of residents’ association in tackling the waste problem must be strengthened by party workers. He also proposed constituting clusters under the associations and effectively delineating the roles of each body.
CPI(M) Polit Bureau members M.A. Baby and T.M. Thomas Isaac, MLAs; T.N. Seema, P.K. Sreemathi, MPs; G. Sudhakaran, V. Sivankutty, P.K. Gurudasan, P. Sreeramakrishnan, R. Rajesh, K. Radhakrishnan, A.M. Ariff, A. Pradeep Kumar, MLAs; leaders of local bodies and experts in the field of waste management participated.
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