Gang disrupts garbage dumping

CMC in a quandary:

Lakshmi de Silva

Heaps of garbage were piling up again in different places in the city of Colombo as the Colombo Municipal Council had not collected garbage for the last few days because of an organized gang’s work at the Kollonnawa dumping site, Director Solid Waste CMC Thangamyl told the Daily News yesterday (29).

CMC workers were working during the weekends too to clear the garbage in the city limits to keep it clean and to eradicate the dengue mosquito menace ,but, all that work had become negative since the sites on which the city garbage was dumped were being blocked by certain elements.

A site to dump garbage was selected at Kolonnawa on a court order but a gang of residents were not allowing the garbage vehicles to dump it there. With the result the vehicles carrying the 700 tons of garbage daily from the city had to turn back and find places in the city to dump the garbage instead, he said.

A culvert on the road on which garbage was taken had also been damaged and the same group that was obstructing the garbage traffic was not allowing the culvert to be repaired.

At the rate of 700 tons, 2,100 tons of garbage is retained in the city in unhealthy and foul smelling heaps accumulating each day and in addition the rain water stagnating creating ideal conditions for mosquito breeding, he said. Thangamyl also said that the local bodies of Kotte, Maharagama and Kolonnawa were dumping garbage in an improper manner and had disrupted their CMC’s safe garbage dumping methods.

The CMC had sought police help in dumping the garbage and action will be taken to clear the accumulated garbage soon, he said.