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Colombo smartens up under keen eye of cops
Colombo residents have reportedly smartened up their garbage practices knowing there’s a beefed-up pack of environmental police ready to take them to court for any failings.
Lopping off branches and sprucing up the city. Pix by Amila Gamage
The Colombo Municipal Council is to put city beautification and waste management programmes into high gear, bringing in mechanised systems to replace the current manual street cleaning process.
“We are hoping to bring down machines like the mechanical sweepers and blow machines next year,” the council’s Chief Operations Manager, M.P.J. Seneviratne, said.
“We are currently coordinating with the Governor, the CMC and the environmental police in order to improve city cleaning and beautification.”
Last month, the environmental police cadre was increased to 1,500 officers and Mr. Seneviratne said their keenness had made people more conscious of their responsibilities in sorting garbage for recycling and disposing of rubbish legally.
The Deputy Inspector-General of the environmental police, Nimal Perera, said environmental police units had been created in all 474 police stations around the country.
“We are working together with the local government authorities and we are also closely monitoring the private companies designated for cleaning the cities,” he said.
Beach clean-ups and shramadanas organised by the environmental police are common nowadays and area residents are being encouraged to become involved in these activities, an officer of the Panadura Police said.
“We have been instructed to take legal action against individuals who harm the environment by their actions. With the re-activation of the environment units in all the police stations, the public has shown an interest in maintaining a clean environment,” he said.
Beach and railway line (top) cleanup at Bam Bambalapitiya
| Stink over Puttalam dump causes return to south | |
Disposal of Colombo’s garbage has recommenced at Kerawalapitiya, near Wattala, following public protests about the stink from the Aruwakkalu sanitary landfill site near Puttalam, which was opened when the Kerawalapitiya site became too full.  Aruwakkalu sanitary landfill site “The authorities assured the area residents that any kind of bad odour will not be transmitted by the sanitary landfill but a couple of months ago residents of Serakkuliya suffered a great deal of health issues due to the odour emitted,” Wanathavilluwa Divisional Secretary, L.D.C. Jayasinghe said. It is believed a technical fault made the sanitary landfill site less than effective. Mr. Jayasinghe said from Thursday no more garbage lorries were being sent to Aruwakkalu. Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) Commissioner Palitha Nanayakkara said segregated waste from Colombo was now being dumped at Kerawalapitiya with the permission of the Sri Lanka Land Development Corporation. “Dumping garbage at Kerawalapitiya is only a temporary measure until the waste energy plant is opened by the end of March next year,” he said. Mr. Nanayakkara said the CMC stopped dumping garbage at Aruwakkalu due to the high cost of transporting waste by road: it cost Rs.75,000 to send one tipper truck up to Puttalam from Colombo.  Protests over garbage being taken to Aruwakkalu The original plan was to transport waste to Aruwakkalu by train but due to the unavailability of trains to transport waste officials were instructed to use road transport. |