Swap shops in Kozhikode disappear after hype

KOZHIKODE: The swap shops started as part of the state government’s prestigious project Haritha Keralam to promote effective waste conservation has run into the civic body’s’ apathy in Kozhikode City and the project has stopped functioning after the initial hype. The swap shops were envisaged as centres where the public could bring reusable products which were not useful to them, but possibly useful to another individual. The idea was that the public could get things which were useful free of cost from the shop.

On December 8, all 93 urban local bodies in Kerala opened swap shops as part of the state-wide cleanliness drive and in Kozhikode City, two more shops were opened on December 15 and 22 but stopped functioning thereafter. Though there was a decision to conduct a wide publicity campaign on the swap shops in the city, the corporation showed no interest.  “Councillors were asked to conduct awareness programmes about the importance of the swap shops. But nothing happened,” said an official who worked on the project.

Kerala Suchitwa Mission district assistant coordinator K.P. Radhakrishnan said that conducting swap shops was the responsibility of the civic bodies. Speaking to Deccan Chronicle, corporation health standing committee chairman K.V. Baburaj promised that the initiative would be revived from the next fiscal year. “I agree that we failed in running it as a continuous process, except in some wards. The concept of a swap shop is very good and will definitely help many people. Hope we can restart it at least at the circle level after the plan fund discussions,” he said. He added that the corporation would use the help of Kudumbashree to revive the concept.