THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, January 18, 2012
The Mayor K.Chandrika inaugurating a seminar on waste disposal
organised by 'Shuchithva Mission' in Thiruvananthapuram on
tuesday................Photo:C.Ratheesh kumar.. . .
Says she is unable to take decision on waste-disposal crisis
The closure of the Vilappilsala solid-waste treatment plant is an
act of ‘democratic violation' on the part of the Vilappil panchayat, Mayor K.
Chandrika has said.
She was speaking after inaugurating a seminar on source-level
waste management organised by the Suchitwa Mission here on Tuesday.
Ms. Chandrika said the panchayat president had no right to shut
down a plant owned and operated by another local body. “The Vilappilsala plant
has been constructed using the city taxpayers' money. The Corporation has spent
around Rs.35 crore on the plant in the past 11 years. The plant was
unilaterally shut down by the panchayat at a time when work on the leachate
treatment plant and sanitary landfill inside the plant was progressing
rapidly,” Ms. Chandrika said.
The State government should not have allowed the Vilappil
panchayat to close the plant without making any alternative arrangement for
waste disposal in the city, she said. “There are around 50 people working round
the clock at the Vilappilsala solid-waste treatment plant, all of whom stay in
quarters provided by the Corporation inside the plant. They do not have any
health issues. I do not understand what health issues are faced by the people
of Vilappil that our workers inside the plant do not have,” Ms. Chandrika said.
She said that as a Mayor, she was unable to take any concrete
decision on dealing with the waste-disposal crisis as her hands were tied by
the State government and the bureaucracy. “When I tried to rope in Costford,
which is an accredited agency, to speed up the household-level ring compost
project, it was objected to by the Suchitwa Mission, which maintained that the
project implementing agency can be finalised only after following a tender
procedure. We all know how much time it takes to complete these procedures,”
Ms. Chandrika said.
Suchitwa Mission executive director George Chackacherry and
director V.S. Santhosh Kumar were present.
Suchitwa Mission solid waste
management director Dileep Kumar made a presentation on source-level
solid-waste management.
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