Public faith in governmental programmes being what they are, no
wonder that the newly elected Thiruvananthapuram city corporation's
announcement about cleaning up
the city fetched no cheers.
The programme, "Green city,
clean city", initially had few takers;
but,very soon, a large number of residents' associations 'and voluntary
organisations along with students,
jumped into the fray, much to the
pleasant surprise of municipal
authorities. And soon, the, de-silting
and cleaning of the entire network
of 492 km of drains ended last
month.
That was just the first phase of
the initiative. "This shows that the
drive was a tremendous success, with
full public participation,' beamed
Peeru Mohammad, health officer of
the city corporation. He admitted
that lack of enthusiasm and Initiative
were the main reasons for the failure
of earlier attempts.
The cleaning of the drains failing
under 50 wards of the city was
admittedly the most difficult part of
the task. Some 600 workers; official
and voluntary, had worked on this
phase of the clean-up.
At the end of operations every
day, the mayor, the corporation secretary and councilors formulated the
next day's plans in an evaluation
meeting. Officials stressed on permanent facilities for the removal of sand
and silt, as the dogged drains were
mainly responsible for the annual
flooding of the city. But sewage
water disposal remains an
intractable problem. The corporation
was able to remove only 60 per cent
of the estimated 300 tonnes of waste
water generated every day.
The garbage disposal site near
the city's international airport was
closed in 1985, due to bird menace
affecting flights. Last year, the government acquired a 5.06 ha site in the
110 off
outskirts of the city for disposing off
garbage effectively. But now residents, fearing groundwater pollution, have formed a council to fight against the plan.
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