Columns

The other day I came across an assessment of the top ten cleanest capital cities in South Asia made by a group (if that is what it is) that parades under the name of Top Ten. This assessment, apparently made late last year or this year states “In 2014 Colombo looked outstanding. By 2016 there will be no slums…..Colombo has the least number of slums. Hard to find any garbage”.

Hard to find any garbage? What a load of rubbish! Maybe for the first time in the history of the Colombo Municipal Council that is mandated, among other things to keep the city clean, it has been taken to the Supreme Court by residents of Kolonnawa for dumping garbage in the Meethotamulla area.

The Court has given the CMC and other concerned authorities time till end February to come up with plans to solve the garbage disposal within the Colombo city limits.

The Court has given the CMC and other concerned authorities time till end February to come up with plans to solve the garbage disposal within the Colombo city limits. Like charity, plans to dispose of garbage should begin at home – the CMC.
Top Ten proudly claims that people have access to walking paths and goes to the extent of calling it “the cleanest city among developing countries.”

Whoever made this assessment and prediction for 2016 seems to have made constant use of the paths that Gotabhaya built and been led up the garden path in this garden city.

Had the person (or persons) who drew these conclusions ventured out from whichever five-star hotel he or they dropped anchor in and gone beyond the immediate environs into the outer city as I have done in the last couple of weeks they might have got an entirely different picture, not to mention an odour.

I have been in Colombo four times since September 2014 and I have seen the steady deterioration of what was not too long ago a spick and span city. Some tell me it started happening since Gota, as he is popularly called, faded into the sunset from early January this year.

There may be a lot of truth in this claim for without a firm and steady hand on the tiller the beautification of Colombo has not only stopped but it is backsliding.

The Colombo Municipal Council is a sick joke fathered on the residents of Colombo. Today’s city fathers appear to be more interested in feathering their own nests than serving the people in the wards that they faithfully promised to do before the elections.

At least I am happy to find that the residents of Jayasinghe Road, Colombo 6, be they the affluent or the not too well-to-do are getting together to muster their voting strength to throw out incumbent councilors, including one they know as Titus (certainly no Titus Andronicus from what I gather).

They are sick of their councilors and want to eject him and others, come the next local government elections if Minister Faiszer Musthapha would set the date when the whole bloody lot can be thrown into the cities uncovered drains and exposed road works which are becoming increasingly dangerous hazards to people on foot or vehicles.

All this was quite a coincidence. I was telling a group of friends that I had just read an assessment by the Top Ten which not only rated Colombo as the cleanest capital but that by 2016 the remaining blots on the city’s escutcheon would disappear.
Very Sri Lankan hoots and other raucous sounds greeted my comments with some rather unsavoury remarks of what should be done to Top Ten.

With that I was invited to journey along Jayasinghe Road and speak to residents to find out what they have to say about the cleanest city without garbage. Somebody suggested that the Top Ten assessors would have discovered enough garbage if they looked into the municipal council though I was not quite sure what was meant.

It did not take long to find out what residents thought of the Colombo Municipal Council, its garbage collection method which suggested there is no method in the CMC’s madness but a madness in its method.

Unlike some other municipal wards or even neighbouring local bodies there does not appear to be a specific day of the week for garbage collection which is what any sensible local authority with minimum brains would do.

For instance in Harrow, UK, where I live the Harrow Council would collect food and kitchen waste every Monday morning and garden waste and recycle waste every other Monday so that residents are aware of what to do.

Garbage collection along Jayasinghe Road appears to be in the hands of some municipal office – according to some it is down Robert Gunawardena Mawatha – not too far away from Jayasinghe Road which runs parallel to the High Level Road and Dutugemunu Road from Pamankade to Kohuwela, and is heavily populated with several lanes running on either side of the main road.

Residents complain there is no specific day of the week for the garbage truck to come along, if it comes along at all. Sometimes it is after a week but more often it is around 10 days or more. As a result nobody knows when to have their refuse ready.
Whenever – and it is truly whenever – the truck comes along with shouts of “kunu, kunu” (garbage, garbage) residents living down lanes have to rush along with their garbage bags, sometimes several 100 yards, to the main road. That could include several bags depending on how many days they have waited.

By the time residents down the lanes get to the top with their bags the truck has moved on and the poor residents are left literally holding the bag.One of the problems is that unlike the old electoral system where every municipal ward had a specific councillor to whom residents could turn to, the current system like the parliamentary election system places no responsibility on a particular elected member. The result is that nobody accepts responsibility and more often evades responsibility and so there is no accountability.

Hopefully this will be rectified when they revert to the previous system with the next election.One resident, a trishaw owner-driver told me that after several complaints by those living by a municipal drain that runs parallel to Jayasinghe Road about the blocked and dilapidated condition of the drain the afore-mentioned Titus and some local authority turned up. The local authority individual said that funds had been passed for repairing/cleaning the drain.

That was about six months ago. That was the last seen of the visiting elected councilor and the bureaucrat and the drain is filling up in these rainy days. What happened to the money that was said to have been passed for the clean-up is anybody’s guess.
The CMC’s health inspectors are running around lecturing city eateries on cleanliness and fining defaulters. But these same health conscious officials seem oblivious to the spread of airborne disease by flies collecting round uncleared garbage.
Parliamentarians resident at Madiwala have complained that mosquitoes are attacking them in force. If mosquitoes can select their target so effectively why is it that municipal health authorities who speak of keeping the city clean and tackling disease cannot ensure that garbage is collected regularly.

Municipal bureaucrats and Top Ten should stop talking rubbish and talk more about clearing rubbish.