The mounting garbage problem in the city of Colombo took a new turn this week with the Supreme Court ordering the Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) to dispose Colombo’s garbage at a site in Peliyagoda.
This decision has triggered protests from area residents who charge that they would face a serious health hazzard because of the huge amounts of garbage that would be dumped.
Interestingly, the ear-marked garbage dump is a few hundred metres away from the proposed muliti-million rupee fish market, which is also to be located in a residential area.
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“There are over 5000 people living in the area and both adults and children had already fallen sick just within two to three days. Even though this is a court order we believe the court has been misled to believe that this is a sparsely populated area. Further the land they are using to dump garbage is a land meant for rain water to drain, if this is filled there would be hazardous consequences,” said Aruna Samarasighe, a resident from the area surrounding the dumping site.
Another resident, P. A. K Weeranayake told The Sunday Times that authorities had started dumping garbage about two days before the court order was given.
“They shouldn’t dump Colombo’s waste on this site, located in a populated area of Gampaha district. Although it is a court order we are against such an environmentally hazardous move. About 12 children and some adults have fallen sick already due to the bad odours emanating from the dump. All we want is to live in peace.
Despite the protests of the residents the CMC and the Urban Development Authority (UDA) are going ahead with the court order and steps have been taken to dispose of the garbage at the site.
The UDA meanwhile claims that most of the residents in the area are unauthorised occupants and should not be in the area at all.
“There are only a few unauthorised settlers in the area. Besides we have to consider the benefit to a majority of the people in comparison to the discomfort of a few in the area,” UDA Director General W. G. Abegunawardana said.
CMC commissioner Badrani Jayawardana said they have been advised by President Mahinda Rajapaksa on this matter and have been given the go ahead to dispose of the garbage. “The garbage problem in Colombo is a serious issue and we have not collected garbage for about 10 days now.
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Usually we collect about 700 tons of garbage a day from the city. We admit nobody likes it when someone dumps garbage near their house but that doesn’t mean that we can wait without finding a solution to this problem. We have to look at the situation and find a practical solution. The court has given us leave to dump garbage at the Peliyagoda site so we are going to implement the court order. We will do so with minimum inconvenience to the residents. The ministry of Urban Development allocated this plot and senior government ministers have assured their support. President Rajapaksa himself got involved in solving this issue,” she said.
However, she says this is a temporary measure until the court gives a decision on the matter on April 27. “We have already started work and employees will be working day and night to regularize the situation,” Ms Jayawardana said.
According to her at the moment one bulldozer is operating round the clock and steps are being taken to introduce more machines at the site.
Contradicting residents’ charges about the bad smell emanating from the dump, she said, it would be done in such away that the bad odour would be minimal. She said a layer of soil would be spread over each layer of garbage.
Meanwhile, Peliyagoda UC Chairman Nihal Ananda told The Sunday Times that they would not have a problem if the disposal is done in an environmentally friendly manner.
“The Peliyagoda local council also dumps garbage at this site but the CMC will dump in a day the quantity that we dump in a month. We don’t have a problem with the CMC using this site as a dumping yard as long as it is done in a proper way with no inconvenience to the area residents,” he said.Central Environmental Authority Director General Pasan Gunasekara said that a team has been commissioned to submit a report on the issue.
“We understand there are some problems but we have to wait till the report is submitted to see what the actual situation is,” he said. |
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