The Hindu 30.10.2013
Solid waste management scheme should be probed: Coimbatore Mayor
Mayor S.M. Velusamy has asked the Coimbatore Corporation Commissioner G. Latha to investigate the way the civic body has implemented the Rs. 98-crore solid waste management (SWM) scheme. After ordering the investigation at the last Ordinary Council Meeting on Friday, he told The Hindu on Monday that the way the civic body — meaning officials — had implemented the scheme was not right. For, the civic body continued to face problems.
It was not the first time that he had asked for the investigation.
“I’ve been asking the officials to carry out a probe ever since I assumed office sometime in October 2011. I had asked the then Commissioner T.K. Ponnusamy, the Deputy Commissioner S. Sivarasu, who for sometime held charge as Commissioner and also the present Commissioner Ms. Latha.”
Stating that the officials had not taken seriously his suggestions for a probe, Mr. Velusamy said that he was forced to reiterate the demand in the council.
Sources familiar with the implementation of the solid waste management programme said that right from the word go, the Union Government-funded scheme did not proceed in the right direction.
The corporation had not distributed bins to all the city’s residents in that it was supposed to have to given white and green bins to each of the city’s residents so as to help them segregate waste into wet and dry wastes.
The corporation had not purchased the right number of pushcarts, was short of roadside bins, was yet to phase out bullock carts in waste management and had not successfully implemented the ban on plastics that were less than 40 microns.
The sources said that the corporation had concentrated the second and third stage of the project in that had bought a few bins, constructed a few transit stations, bought vehicles for the transport of the waste from the transit stations to the dump yard in Vellalore and roped in a contractor to process the waste there.
What the corporation did not do was educate the city’s residents on waste segregation — the first of the three stages of the waste management.
The result of the poor awareness creation exercise was that the Corporation transported mixed waste to the dump yard, where processing became next to impossible.
The sources said that the corporation was yet to spend the Rs. 45 lakh the Union Government gave to create awareness under the waste management project.
