Thiruvananthapuram: Open land in medical college becomes dumping ground

Thiruvananthapuram: The Medical College Hospital campus has turned into a dumping yard with all three institutions housed inside dumping garbage in the open due to lack of waste management facility. 

As part of the crisis management, the authorities are temporarily landfilling large quantities of waste on a daily basis at the land identified for setting up the paediatric wing behind Sree Avittom Thirunal (SAT) Hospital.

Thiruvananthapuram Medical College principal Dr Thomas Mathew said waste management had become an enormous issue for them. The college authorities are forced to take the responsibility to dispose of garbage generated at other institutions including the SAT and the Regional Cancer Centre (RCC) on the campus. 

The three dump approximately seven tonnes of garbage on the land on a daily basis.

“Biomedical wastes generated at the hospitals are being disposed of by IMAGE, the biomedical waste disposal system operated by Indian Medical Association (IMA). The incinerator at RCC has gone defunct, and recently they have also started dumping waste on our land. We cannot go on burying waste,” Dr Mathew told DC. 

CIAL, the agency constructing the paediatric wing here, will launch the work within two months.

A top RCC official said that steps had been taken to fix the defunct incinerator. 

“The incinerator will be up and running within a week or two. We are dumping waste in the land belonging to the medical college, which is just a temporary arrangement,” said the official. 

Lack of fencing and widespread encroachment by outsiders is another issue faced by the authorities. 

“We are burying waste to contain the crisis. We don’t have much land left for waste management. We actually had 150 plus acres of land earlier, and now we possess only 137 acres due to encroachment,” said Dr Mathew. 

Extensive expansion has happened inside the campus over the years which lead to more waste generation.

The Medical College is planning to install one more incinerator. 

“We have six biogas plants managing biodegradable waste generated inside the campus. We have around eight canteens on the campus,” he added.  

The average footfall on the campus is around 50,000, and there are some 5,000 inpatients.