The Hindu 27.02.2013
Corporation does a clean act
An impressive effort on the part of the city Corporation
over the past three days presented a much cleaner version of a city
steeped in a garbage crisis to the thousands of devotees who arrived
here to participate in the annual Attukal Pongala festival. On Tuesday
night, the momentum was sustained with over 1,600 workers, under the
leadership of the civic body’s health officers and inspectors, engaged
in a cleaning exercise that began soon after the festivities at 3 p.m.
Ending
with a flourish, standing committee chairperson V.S. Padmakumar said
they “would create rainfall in front of the Secretariat,” implying that
six tanker lorries had been deployed to spray water to clean the roads
of all the ash and food that had stained the arterial city road. The
initial plan was to wash the length of road until the East Fort area,
but the exercise would be carried out depending on how long the water —
pumped from ponds under the Corporation’s jurisdiction — would last.
The
entire cost of the last-minute city clean-up undertaken entirely by the
civic body cost Rs.2 lakh, said officials. On Tuesday, 63 squads
scoured the area around the temple and carted off the waste to two
locations — Chala, beside the Attakulangara bypass, and Palayam market.
Previously, they had planned four centres to dump the garbage, but two
sufficed. Over 125 loads of garbage were collected, which weighed 700
tonnes,saidMr. Padmakumar.