KOCHI: The comprehensive cleaning of Fort Kochi beach will begin on December 15 when the tourism season gets into full-fledged pitch. Though the beach is manually cleaned by 20 workers daily round the year, because of the amount of waste littered and washed ashore, the beach fails to get the desired look. "We will deploy a Hitachi machine for the cleaning purpose and the work will start from next Friday. The cleaning using the machine will be undertaken daily which will last for over a month. This is undertaken because the beach will be thronged by a lot of foreign and desi tourists for Christmas and New Year and has to be readied for celebrations," said Shyni Mathew, Kochi Corporation Town Planning Committee chairperson who represents the area in the Corporation Council.
She said that currently 10 workers of Heritage Authority and 10 workers of Tourism Department clean the beach. But the kind of waste and the amount and the nature of the beach make it practically difficult to ensure that it is cleaned in the manual way. "Since this daily cleaning fails to meet the objective of make the beach fully clean, on Saturdays the home stays, hotels and residents associations in the area deploy workers to clean the area. The Corporation deploys vehicles to collect the waste," Ms Shiny Mathew said. She said that though the Ockhi cyclone created unusual waves on Fort Kochi beach also, it did not result in accumulation of additional waste or cause any extra damage to the beach.
