Residents fix target date to Corp
The Corporation and residents wrestle over the garbage dumps at the Vellalore yard.Once again, the residents of over 20 colonies in Kurichi Municipality and Vellalore Town Panchayat are up in arms against the Coimbatore Corporation. They have given the civic body time till September 15 to shift the garbage yard from its sewage farm along Chettipalayam Road in Vellalore, about 10 km south of the city. If the Corporation does not meet the deadline, the residents plan to picket the main office of the civic body to register their protest. “Enough is enough,” says Kurichi-Vellalore Pollution Prevention Action Committee secretary K.S. Mohan. “For two months, officials in the district administration and the Corporation said they would hold talks with us to find a solution to the problem of smoke from burning garbage and flies from the waste dumps entering our houses. But, nothing has been done,” he says.
The committee itself was formed four years ago to voice the plight of the people of these colonies and campaign for the shifting of the yard. A road blockade was staged two years ago and petitions submitted to the district administration, Corporation and the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board seeking a lasting solution.
Mr. Mohan says the people do not have faith in the assurance given by the Corporation that its proposed Rs.96-crore solid waste management scheme will provide a solution, as bio-degradable waste will be converted into manure and the non-biodegradable buried safely.“Let the Corporation find a space for this within its boundaries. If the process they are to adopt will not harm residential areas, they can very well do it on their own territory,” he says.The residents have got the support of Lok Sabha MP from Coimbatore K. Subbarayan, who had already taken part in the road blockade.
In a letter sent recently to Local Administration Minister M.K. Stalin, the MP explained the plight of the residents.He said that 20 to 30 flies settled on every food item in all the houses near the yard. The people, especially children, were not able to have food.After talks earlier with the residents, the Corporation had assured them that the yard would be shifted by April 14. But, the word was not kept, the MP said in the letter. He appealed to the Minister for measures to end the dumping of garbage at Vellalore immediately in order to end the health hazards the yard now posed to the people.Appreciating the MP’s support to the committee’s battle, Mr. Mohan says: “We have no other option left. Our experience so far has been so bad that we are not in a position to rely on the assurance from the Corporation that safe disposal methods will end the problems we are now facing from the yard.”
