The Hindu         27.06.2011

Garbage woes of city likely to pile up

Staff Reporter

The Centre for Environment and Development (CED), the agency that has been running the solid waste treatment plant of the Kochi Corporation at Brahmapuram, has decided to opt out of the responsibility.

According to indications, the agency will leave the job within a couple of months. The agency had earlier served the mandatory notice to the civic body indicating its desire to opt out. As the three-month notice period has already expired, the firm can walk out of the contract anytime without any legal hassles.

However, the agency has assured the civic body that it will continue till the civic body identifies another agency for running the plant.

Any delay in finding another agency for the business will have serious repercussions as the plant site is overflowing with garbage collected from various parts of the city.

The CED could not wait for the City Corporation indefinitely and the civic body would have to find some agency to manage the plant, said a senior functionary of CED.

Technical snags

The agency had been running the plant for the past one year. It was during the term of the previous council that the civic authorities invited the agency to support the corporation in making the plant operational. The plant, which was set up using the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission funds, had developed serious technical snags within one year of its commissioning.

The lack of support from the civic body, including the delay in clearing the bills and shortage of infrastructure facilities, had upset the plans of the CED in properly managing the plant. The shortage of vehicles to be used inside the plant, delay in developing the internal roads and the absence of basic infrastructure had all affected the functioning of the plant. The bills, which were submitted nearly eight months ago, were yet to be paid and the corporation owed the agency around Rs.40 lakh, CED authorities said.

A stage had reached where the agency was not able to implement its scheme for the operation of the plant. Any continuance of the agency in the Brahmapuram plant would affect its credibility. The agency had also incurred considerable loss for supporting the Kochi Corporation in running the treatment plant, he said.

Though the plant was in working condition, considerable time was being lost every day in de-clogging the waste from the machinery.

Water from the nearby river entered the tipping floor, dampening the waste being fed into the machine. The machines needed to be de-clogged and cleaned every hour thus affecting the efficiency of the plant, he said.