Thanks to the Ernakulum district administration, employees of all government offices and schoolchildren in Kochi got an extra holiday on Monday.
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Thanks to the Ernakulum district administration, employees of all government offices and schoolchildren in Kochi got an extra holiday on Monday.
That’s because the authorities wanted to keep the streets free of people and help clear the rising tide of trash from Kerala’s busiest city.
By Monday evening, thousands of tonnes of waste had been picked up from various parts of the city and dumped at a 500-acre yard in the suburbs belonging to Fertilizers and Chemicals Travancore (FACT), a public sector firm.
The district collector, on special assignment to clean up Kochi, said the city would be cleared of accumulated trash from Tuesday.
As the mounds of waste kept building up on the roadsides, the stink got so bad that nearly 500 people had to be sheltered in schools converted into refugee camps.
The situation got out of hand when civic workers stopped picking up the garbage after it was found that the regular dumping yard could take no more.
Though the corporation tried to dump waste at a yard in Brahmapuram, a village on Kochi’s outskirts that is the proposed site of a waste treatment plant, the civic body had to retreat in the face of stiff resistance from residents.
On Friday, the Kerala High Court stepped in. This happened after a judge had to stop court proceedings for want of fresh air. Next thing, a division bench ordered collector APM Mohammed Hanish to ship out the garbage within five days.
The bench gave him a free hand to choose where he wanted to dump the junk but made it clear that the waste should be treated scientifically.
After Monday's effort, a relieved Hanish said: “Waste disposal will be back to normal from Tuesday. Around 1,000 workers, including supervisors, are on the job.
We have also reached an agreement with workers of Fertilisers and Chemicals Travancore and the local residents who had threatened to stop the dumping.”
The collector had earlier warned of a plague outbreak in Kochi similar to the one in Surat several years ago. In order to pre-empt any protest, the collector had clamped prohibitory orders in Ambalamedu, the site of the FACT yard, since Saturday evening.
The workers called off a strike scheduled on Tuesday after talks with the collector. In spite of that, the police had to remove protestors by force from the entrance to the dump yard.
For the next seven months at least, the Ernakulam administration may not have to declare a holiday to clean up the city. Because, all the junk would be shipped to the FACT yard in Ambalamedu.
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