CHENNAI: The residents of Thiruvottriyur and surrounding areas do not have to worry about cattle nibbling the overflowing garbage bins, thanks to the recently introduced battery-operated vehicles which have not only reduced collection time but also minimised manpower involvement. Last Friday, the Greater Chennai Corporation’s Zone 1, to which Thiruvottriyur belongs received three battery-operated vehicles manufactured by REEP motors at a cost of Rs 1.5 lakh each.
Covering up to sixty km every day, the vehicles, which ply in Wimco Nagar, Ernavoor, Kathivakkam, Balaji Nagar, Jothi Nagar, Mullai Nagar and Ellaiamman Kovil, make six to eight trips to and fro. Officials say it has reduced the duration between garbage collection spot and resource recovery centre (RRC) by at least one and a half hours.
‘’It takes an hour for a tricycle to collect garbage door-to-door and another hour to reach the RRC to dump it. Now the tricycles keep the collected garbage on the main roads and vehicle collects it and reaches the RRC in just 30 minutes,’’ said a corporation official of zone 1. The vehicles have also helped collect more loads in one trip.”While a tricycle only has two 110 litre bins collecting about 80 kg of garbage per day, the e-vehicles with six bins collects 240 kg per trip,’’ the official said.
The maintenance of the vehicles is hassle-free and requires four hours of charging, the official said.
For Zone 1, there are totally six trained drivers; three for full-time and three in reserve. ‘’Seeing the new vehicle on the roads people also feel happy and are motivated to segregate the waste before dumping it,’’ says P Chinnaiah, a driver in Zone 1.
‘’We ourself clean the vehicle, charge it at night and take care of loading and unloading the bins,’’ he says, adding that they are yet to get a full-time technical assistant to attend to the maintenance. Out of the six bins, three are for red waste (sanitary waste) while one is for blue waste (non-biodegradable items) and two are for green waste (biodegradable items). “With our performance, we want to set an example to the other zones too,’’ the official in the Zone 1 concluded.