News
Garbage rots on roadsides as councils fumble for lasting solutions
Bags of garbage scattered on main roads, in front of supermarkets and even medical centres have become a common sight in Hendala, Wattala over the past three weeks.
Hekitta: Pedestrians are forced to walk on the middle of the road because the garbage has taken over the pavement. Pix by M.A. Pushpa Kumara
Uncollected garbage bags hang on front fences of properties with maggots crawling over them; flies swarm around them in the daytime and rats and dogs dig into the bags at night.
Most residents now avoid visiting marketplaces, where refuse piles are highest, and take three-wheeler rides to avoid walking past them.
Ratnam Kalyani, a sweep ticket seller, said sales had fallen because customers are deterred by a huge pile of garbage next to her ticket booth, and nearby shops were also suffering from a drop in business.
“I closed my booth for five days due to the smell,” she said. “I never have a meal when I’m at work. How could we even breathe with this smell?” she demanded.
A garbage heap on the side of Hekitta Road has become a feeding ground for crows and stray dogs. Pedestrians are forced to walk along the middle of the road because the garbage has taken over the pavement.
Trishaw driver Bosco Perera said the dumping obstructed the trishaw parking area and drivers had lost customers. He added that because of the foul smell on the roads most regular customers rarely use the road.
The dumping site at Suduwella in Ja Ela
“We informed the police but no strong action was taken so we put up a board ‘stop dumping’,” he said.
Residents say the sudden breakdown of garbage collection is due to the United People’s Freedom Alliance-controlled council’s failure to find solutions to the issue. With the lapse of the council’s term the problem has been aggravated as the burden has now fallen on civil servants, with no elected officials to drive decisions.
Jude Christopher, a former JVP council member of the Wattala Pradeshiya Sabha, said the garbage crisis was a result of the former administration’s lapses. “People were making money by using the garbage as landfill instead of finding a permanent solution to the problem,” he said.
Adding to the problem, a garbage recycling project had collapsed.
Mr. Christopher said politicians had been manipulating the garbage collection system to fill marshy lands with garbage in order to sell the “reclaimed” land for large profits. This illegal dumping now caused flooding in the area as natural water courses had been blocked, he said.
Wattala Pradeshiya Sabha Secretary, K.H.S Irangani, said that several years ago the council dumping site was at Dickowita, used for 25 years but closed when a fisheries harbour was opened nearby.
She said there had been plentiful space to even incinerate garbage within the three acres of the Dickowita dump. After it was closed down the government had not allocated space for a replacement, forcing them to choose temporary sites.
She said the council had started to clean up garbage from Wednesday but were facing problems of space for the load. Residents said garbage collection was still far from normal after three weeks of crisis.
Theresa Amman: Living next door to a dump site
The Sunday Times learns that after the Dickowita site was closed the former council chairman had selected a plot of land owned by a UPFA council member for the new dump but that following instructions from a VIP dumping had stopped.
The former chairman of the Wattala Pradeshiya Sabha, Thiyagaratne Alwis, said told the Sunday Times that after the Dickowita site was lost the council finally was able to set up a dump in six acres of land in Pubudugama.
“We spent Rs 400,000 to prepare the dumping site, but when rains came the area went under three feet of water,” he said.
“We had to stop collecting garbage and transporting it to the site as the area was flooded.”
He said each day the council received 70 tons of garbage from 22 collection tractors.
Garbage collection and disposals in many other local councils also faces problems, with authorities failing to find solutions.
Residents at Tudella Ja Ela also complained about unplanned garbage dumping by the local authority.
They said that when dumping areas become flooded garbage was washed into their houses.
They complained that the former chairman of the Ja-Ela Urban Council, Upali Arambawatta, had acquired land that he promised would be used for the building of a community hall but had subsequently turned it into a dumping ground for rubbish.
Yamuna Rani, 41, a resident of Suduwella village said about 30 families were affected by the illegal dumping of garbage by the Ja-Ela Urban council over the past four years.
“The garbage site is at the back of our house. It smells, and flies and mosquitoes come to our homes and spread disease”, she said.
Mrs Rani said her two children, aged six and two, frequently fell ill due to germs spread by mosquitoes and flies. She said local families complained to the police and went to court over the matter in 2011 but dumping was still taking place while the case was pending. Another resident, Kuranage Nilanthi Menika, said she could not put clothes out to dry because crows dropped garbage on them. Her children sometimes were forced to stay home from school because their uniforms were ruined by the crows.
Jennet Fernando, 70, said that in previous times she used to pluck lotus flowers growing in the lake and bathe in it, and played in her neighbours’ paddy fields.
“Today we receive floods that carry garbage into houses. This has become hell. All of us are suffering,” she said.
Sixty-five-year-old Theresa Amman, who lives with her daughter’s family said they lived cooped up inside the house with doors and windows shut most of the time to escape the foul smell of garbage and the thousands of flies attracted to the rubbish.