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Paydirt: Contractor gets Rs. 1.65bn to cart off Colombo rubbish
The Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) has embarked on a high-cost garbage transfer process under pressure to find a speedy solution to rubbish being dumped on city streets over the past week.
Clearing up the garbage piling up on Jumma Masjid Road (above). An ugly sight: Garbage in Dematagoda (right) and Katawalamulla (below left). Pix by Indika Handuwala
The move came as the Ministry of Megapolis and Western Development ruled it could not accept more garbage for the Kerawalapitiya site near Wattala, leaving the CMC without a location for Colombo garbage.
The CMC estimates it would be spending Rs. 1.65 billion a year to send garbage through a private transport company to the Aruwakkalu sanitary landfill site in Puttalam.
This is in contrast to the Rs. 630 million paid annually to the Sri Lanka Land Reclamation and Development Corporation (SLLRDC) to dump garbage at at corporation site in Kerawalapitiya.
Some 40 trucks will be required to transport approximately 600 metric tonnes of garbage collected daily in Colombo city to the country’s north for disposal.
CMC Municipal Commissioner Palitha Nananayakkara said the transport of council garbage to Arawakkalu began on Thursday. CMC trucks collect garbage from around the city and take it to Kerawalapitiya and a private contractor takes over from there to transport it to Arawakkalu. Mr. Nananayakkara said a disagreement over payment for damage to roads caused by the garbage trucks had been resolved with the private contractor agreeing to pay for road maintenance.
The Pradeshiya Sabha in Wanathawilluwa in the Puttalam District had wanted the CMC to pay a fee for road maintenance in the area, saying the constant transit of garbage trucks would damage roads.
“First they asked us to pay Rs. 4 million a day and then asked for Rs. 3 million,” Mr. Nananayakkara said. “Then the Ministry of Megapolis said to pay them the full amount but we did not agree to that. The Governor of the Western Province said we should Rs. 2.5 million a day.
“We made an agreement with the contractors that they themselves would have to bear the cost of paying the money and should undertake negotiations with the Wanathawilluwa Pradeshiya Sabha,” Mr. Nanayakkara said. No negotiations have yet taken place.
Under an agreement signed with Western Power Company (a subsidiary of Aitken Spence and Co), the CMC will at a future date send all its solid waste to an energy plant at Kerawalapitiya that, it is hoped, would be commissioned in 2020.
The CMC said it had been told by the SLLDRC on June 25 that the Kerawalapitiya could not accommodate any more non-recyclable waste.
Megapolis Ministry Secretary Nihal Rupasinghe said the SLLDRC dump site had been chosen as an interim solution pending completion of the Aruwakkalu site but that after two years it had reached full capacity.
The CMC said in early July it had tried to negotiate with the ministry to keep sending garbage to Kerawalapitiya or to lease a five-acre block of land as an alternative site until the waste-to-energy project was commissioned.
No resolution was reached. The ministry insisted that Colombo garbage be transported to Aruwakkalu.
The original plan involving Aruwakkalu was that the garbage be taken by train from Kelaniya to Aruwakkalu but the rail track is still under construction so the CMC now has to undertake the extra cost of road transport.
