Waste woes dog Rajaji Nagar

Thiruvananthapuram: The garbage heap at Rajaji Nagar provokes a question – should not the Corporation have given the colony top priority while popularising its source-level management campaign? To begin with, the place is not too far from the Secretariat. But the residents here know little about kitchen bin. Prabha Sivankutty says, “I know what it is. It turns waste to biogas, right?” Her daughter Akhila has heard about the bin from her friends, but is not sure about what it does.

This, even though the Corporation had conducted a survey here, which revealed that 200 residents would be interested in setting up bins at their homes, according to Thampanoor councillor M V Jayalekshmi. She fears kitchen bins may not be practical, as most residents may not be able to afford the monthly service charge of Rs 200. The real problem, she says, is that much of the litter comes from colony residents who are employed by agencies to collect waste from households. A portion of the money they earn on each bin needs to go to the agency. In order to avoid paying the agency, they dump garbage on the road, says Jayalekshmi.

The CPM councillor had requested for an aerobic bin months ago. But mistaking the bin for a ‘waste plant’, many residents including Prabha  raised an objection. In order to help them understand how an aerobic bin functions, now the Corporation is mooting setting up a portable bin at the Rajaji Nagar market. Thampanoor is included in the second phase of the ‘Suchitwa Ward’ campaign. “Much of the problem will be solved if the wards around it deal with the waste at the source itself,” says Jayalekshmi. For now, the heap is here to stay, like a landmark of sorts.