Deccan Chronicle 24.12.2009

Garbage disposal poor in suburbs

Dec. 23: The state government’s efforts and plans to improve the city infrastructure might help solve Chennaiites’ problems in the near future. But for the residents of the suburbs even the basic amenities remain a dr-eam. They say, problems pertaining to collection and disposal of garbage and insanitary conditions seem to be worsening across the southern and parts of western suburbs of Chennai in the past few months.

Residents blame it on the local bodies for they don’t educate people on the imp-ortance of source segregation and door-to-door garb-age collection. V.R. Sudha-nandhan, a resident of Ra-dha Nagar in Chromepet, says, “There has been a visible increase in insanitary conditions in many areas of Chromepet in the past two to three months.” Residents of Pallavaram, Pammal and West Tambaram voice similar complaints. “There is no door-to-door garbage co-llection and the local mu-nicipality has not kept even a bin on our street for gar-bage disposal,” added Sudhanandhan.

On the southern fringes of the city on ECR, the residents say there is no system being followed for garbage collection. “We don’t have a system for garbage disposal at all. Every morning I take the day’s waste in my car to dispose it off near the Neelamkari dumping yard,” says Ms Vohra, a resident. Some communities here dump garbage at open space on their premises, which compounds health hazards, she added.

According to official sou-rces, there is no immediate plan or scheme to tackle ga-rbage disposal in suburbs.