THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Sunday marked a whole month and a day into the capital city’s vexatious garbage crisis, but the warring factions - the UDF Government and the Left-ruled Corporation - remain singularly clueless - as before - as to what to do with the mounting trash.
The Corporation says it is impossible to go on burying garbage in designated locations. In fact, burial has more or less stopped in many places. The bad publicity accumulated by Vilappilsala over the years has also ensured that finding an alternative location will prove doubly difficult - the past one month amply proving this point through public outcries at Bonocaud and Nettukaltheri.
On Saturday, Mayor K Chandrika took her second much-publicised sit-in to the Cliff House, the official residence of Chief Minister Oommen Chandy. Not that anybody was expecting a solution.
Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, who with his typical verve, had convened a special Cabinet to discuss garbage, even announced that small biowaste plants would be established at the ministerial bungalows and the residences of top officials. Setting an example for the public. The people are still waiting for the ‘inauguration.’
‘’We are in no position to continue with the burial of trash. The government’s hasty closure of the Vilappilsala plant ensured that no alternative location will be found, ever,’’ said Deputy Mayor G Happykumar.
‘’The Government roundly shifted the blame on to the Corporation after finding that a solution was not easy to find,’’ he added. Thiruvananthapuram spews out approximately 250 tonnes of trash a day, which translates itself into about 14 truck-loads.
On the other hand, the past one month has also seen the public adapting. True, bulging bags of trash are dumped by the roadside all around, but households have also started reducing the amount of waste generated, burning it and learning composting techniques. The use of plastic also has come down with shopkeepers reluctant to hand them out as freely as before.