THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Amid a mounting waste management crisis that has put the BJP-led administration at Thiruvananthapuram corporation under pressure, the local self-government department (LSGD) has convened a high-level review meeting this week to assess operational bottlenecks and improve coordination in waste management.
The meeting to be chaired by the LSGD principal secretary comes amid an escalating blame game between the city corporation and Clean Kerala Company Ltd (CKCL), the state-owned agency entrusted with transporting non-biodegradable waste from material collection facilities (MCFs).
While corporation officials attribute the accumulation of waste to delays in vehicle deployment by CKCL, the company has rejected the allegation, maintaining that communication lapses within the civic body were responsible for the delays.
The civic body alleged that the waste crisis was worse in wards serviced by CKCL, adding that the issue would be taken up in the review meeting. A senior official of the corporation said that the Haritha Karma Sena now collects an average of 31 tonnes of non-biodegradable waste daily. “Our collection has remained consistent. The issue arises when there are delays in lifting the collected waste because vehicles are not available,” the official said.
The official said that CKCL had earlier failed to deploy vehicles on time, resulting in 3-5 day delays in lifting waste from some MCFs. “After the issue was taken up with the authorities, they have been providing vehicles more efficiently. Green Worms also had occasional lapses, but those delays never exceeded more than a day or two,” the official said. According to officials, the civic body requires at least six to seven vehicle trips daily.
The CKCL has been handling corporation’s non-biodegradable waste management since 2022 and has processed 6,457 tonnes of non-biodegradable waste during the 2025-26 financial year. A CKCL official emphasised that the company regularly removes segregated waste from MCFs across the corporation through requests generated by health inspectors using an online application.
According to CKCL, it collects an average of 20 tonnes of non-biodegradable waste every day from MCFs, besides transporting around six tonnes of waste daily from bulk waste generators (BWGs) such as hotels, hospitals and resorts. “Once the material reaches the MCFs and the information is updated on the app, we remove it. There has been no delay from our side. We remove around 400 tonnes of material every month from Thiruvananthapuram,” a senior CKCL official said.
The official alleged that the delays stem from communication failures within the corporation rather than operational shortcomings on CKCL’s part. “For waste to be lifted, the concerned health inspector has to intimate us through the system. In several instances that information does not reach us on time and later the company is blamed for the delay. We have records showing when requests were received and when the material was removed,” the official added.