a beautiful
Kerala State... Ambassador!!!
Another day of
meetings with officials of Trivandrum Municipal Corporation, health officers…
They were all
very kind, and very helpful, a lot more trying than the guy from Suchitwa Mission,
which is supposed to be a helping body between Government bodies and local
entities, giving guidelines on waste management: I had an appointment with the
director at 10am and finally saw him for 15min at 4pm.
Whole day…
wasted! TII: This Is India!
The next day turned as a dream, my dream: a day touring around Trivandum waste facilities on the back of... a Royal Enfield.
Any official vehicle near Villapilchalla would create some real problems, strikes... so the motorbike was incognito!...I felt like a garbage...spy!
The next day turned as a dream, my dream: a day touring around Trivandum waste facilities on the back of... a Royal Enfield.
Any official vehicle near Villapilchalla would create some real problems, strikes... so the motorbike was incognito!...I felt like a garbage...spy!
But Gosh is it
difficult…to get info, to get the authorization to ask for info, to understand
those info, not only from the language barrier but just as well from systems
differences, governance incredible complications.
Yesterday I met
with the chief Health Officer and after 2 written letters on the spot to
explain why I was there, where from, what I really wanted, in details… one to
her and one to … the additional secretary (the name itself…) then doors opened.
Actually people
were really nice and friendly.
It is just the
system, which so bureaucratic, so heavy in fact.
It kind of sets
the tone for the rest of my visit.
A dump fill, a
waste treatment plant that was closed last year because… built in the territory
of a panchayat on Tvd Municipality land… where people striked to get it closed…
Smells, leakages…numerous
sanitary, health problems at the front, inextricable political battles of power
in the back between Congress Party and CPM.
Well in a
nutshell, I was now facing a city of more than 1mio people without a waste
treatment plant, with numerous salvage points of waste dumping in the middle of
the city, called temporary solutions…
In the morning a
few meetings with Health Officers, juniors, seniors give me a sense of the
complexity of the problem: a governance embedded between central regional government,
Municipal Corporation and outskirts villages, panchayats with their own rights
and blocking possibilities.
In the case of
the dump fill of Villapilchalla, the Municipal Corporation had acquired 56
hectares of land back in 2000 and converted it into a dump fill in their full
ownership rights. But after recurring leaking problems surrounding villagers
started to block access to the place, striking…
Central
government does not like contestation especially when CPM party (Communist
party of India) replaces Congress Party.
A majority of
key posts in every corporations in Kerala are elected hence very submitted to
political decisions.
Which in this
case made everything even more complicated.
The dump fill
site closed in dec 2011, against a Supreme Court decision.
Leaving a city of
1mio people without Dump fill solutions.
Well this may
have the good effect of forcing the Municipality to really find decentralized
solutions and non dumping ones.
Like those pipe composting individual house solutions or those bio-bins as well for composting in Flat buildings... looking like coffins!
Like those pipe composting individual house solutions or those bio-bins as well for composting in Flat buildings... looking like coffins!
But the current
choices are merely addressing 20% of the waste generated.
How long with take until a plague occurs in those illegal dumping points like it did in Surat in 1994 after repeated floods?
Or simply to intoxicate people with toxic effluents from plastic burning... happening more and more...illegally, uncontrolled
Or simply to intoxicate people with toxic effluents from plastic burning... happening more and more...illegally, uncontrolled
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