Uncleared garbage piles up in Kovai

Corporation officials maintain that the conservancy staff are on puja holidays and will recommence garbage collection work from Wednesday. But the city residents are a harried lot as the stinking heaps lead to unhygienic conditions.

"Just because the entire state is grieving for the arrest of the former CM, the civic machinery seems to have come to a grinding halt. The grief should not impact civic work as it is the public who ultimately suffer," said Mr K. Kanagasundaram of Alagesan Road in Saibaba Colony.

The Shunya zero waste management project that is being implemented in Hudco Colony in Sivananda Colony appears to be a failure as the segregation at source is not done at the doorstep.

The residents were expected to segregate the waste as degradable/non-degradable waste at their house but the garbage is being dumped without any segregation.

The corporation had locked the bin to discourage dumping but the residents have broken the lock to continue dumping, said Mr A. Manoj an RTI activist. Mr S. Ramanan, a resident of the area complains that people on the adjacent streets were also dumping waste into these bins.

The corporation had procured black bins to dump debris, but this is also being used only to dump domestic waste, said Mr P. Maheshwaran of Periyar Nagar.

Earlier, the civic body had planned to dump construction waste in wells but as NGOs opposed the proposal, stating that a well is a potential water source, the proposal was dropped and black bins were purchased. But this not of any use as these bins are not used to dump debris.

When contacted, mayor P. Rajkumar said he would inspect the areas on Wednesday and ensure that garbage is cleared immediately.