India gets first litter-free city

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>From today, India gets first litter-free city: Kozhikode

 

 

 

RAJEEV P I

 

 

Posted online: Friday, August 12, 2005 at 0231 hours IST

 

 

 

KOZHIKODE, AUGUST 11: Many Kozhikodans love to believe that Vasco Da

Gama won't lose his way if he returns to the city now, 507 years

after his ship famously docked here—the narrow, winding city streets

haven't changed much since.

 

But Kozhikode is now all set to be declared India's first litter-free

city, tomorrow. Author and social critic Sukumar Azhikode will make

the formal declaration at an elaborate function here.

 

 

 

The only rough patch is, the Congress-led opposition in the local

city corporation has decided to boycott the declaration. They allege

it is a vote-catching ploy of the CPM-led front ruling the civic

body, five months to Kerala's local bodies poll.

 

The change, however, is for real. Gone are the odious heaps of fly-

infested trash, even the eyesore public rubbish bins. No one throws

garbage out anymore, or need to. Thanks to an initiative that has

caught the fancy of much of the city population, smartly uniformed

young women arrive driving specially designed cargo autorickshaws at

each city home, shop and office every morning, picking up the

garbage. Every home has been given two covered containers—a white one

for plastics and other non-biodegradable wastes, green for other

trash.

 

Together, the 730-odd trained women belonging to local self-help

collectives now handle some 300 tonnes of city wastes, over the 83

square kilometres that this small city straddles. They are organised

into 73 different units of ten women each. The city corporation gives

each unit a grant of Rs 1.25 lakh and helps get an equal amount as

bank loans, to buy two autorickshaws. Almost all of them are the

unemployed from poorer city homes.

 

It's not a free service. Each home must pay them a service charge of

up to Rs 30 each month. Shops, hotels and offices pay more. But few

seem to grudge it, except in politically polarised city pockets. ``It

is any civic body's basic responsibility to keep its city clean. It's

not fair to charge people for such a service,'' says Noorbina Rashid,

councillor and a leader of the opposition in the corporation.

 

But others are happy. ``All 73 units remain comfortably viable a year

since launch,'' says P Venugopal, the corporation secretary.

Initially, the women used to hire male drivers, but not anymore. They

drive their autos themselves.

 

The city corporation's covered trash trucks relay the collected

rubbish from the autorickshaws to the refuse yard on the outskirts at

Nheliyamparamba. A private company, Poabs Ltd, then gets down to

turning wastes into manure at the corporation's refuse processing

plant on the site, while the segregated plastic and non-degradables

go to landfill sites.

 

The Rs 6.13-crore model solid waste management project is funded

jointly by the Union Ministry for Environment and Forests, the state

pollution control board and the city corporation. Before its kick off

in 2004 June, the corporation had managed to rope in local NGOs,

officials, residents associations, trade bodies and others to pledge

their support.

 

Local monitoring committees headed by the respective ward councillors

and nine local members monitor the garbage collection and cleanliness

drive. Hotels and the trade have their own street monitoring

committees.

 

``There have been some non-cooperation in some areas, mostly

political. So we are going to bring in adequately hefty fines for

garbage throwing, with a built-in option of designated rubbish drop

points in the city for those wanting to keep off this project,'' says

city mayor Thottathil Raveendran.

 

The only remaining hitch in cleaning up the city, the Mayor claims,

is finding a site to house the city's Rs 50 lakh night soil disposal

plant. Its attempts have been meeting with stiff local resistance

everywhere.

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