Garbage - Disposal and Clearing!

The only contribution many of us have made to this city we live in is the garbage we dispose. Like most cities, the majority of us want to live clean looking, well maintained lives and want all the muck we create to be cleared by someone else and self-righteously maintain our payment of taxes as our contribution. But, the issue is beyond that.

1. Can we minimize the garbage we create in our homes, offices, social gatherings, etc.?

2. Can we spend time to do some responsible segregation /disposal / recycling / reuse?

The following mail from Mr. Narayanan (editor, paadam mangazine) highlights one  important related  issue for all of us to be aware of.  To me the issue of the bad treatment of the sewage cleaning personnel by the Corporation is not independent of our own understanding of  garbage and practices around its disposal.

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5^th November 2009.

Chairman & Managing Director                                                              
Chennai Metro water Supply and Sewerage Board
Chindadripet, Chennai – 600 002.                                                                    

Kind Attn: Mr.Siv Das Meena.

Ref: Madras High Court order dt  5^th August 2009 against Contempt petition No.352 of 2009

Dear Sir,

Greetings.

There is a strong possibility that you may consider the content of this letter and its attachment as 'a cheap Publicity stunt'and you have every right and liberty to think so.

However, I consider it as a method  or effort to draw the attention of yourselves, the Government, the politicians and indifferent public. I don’t have the wherewithal to organize rallies or marches or go to the beach to start fasting and am only an ordinary activist, if I can call so.  Hence this method. 

Yes. Attached please find  photographs of me holding in both my hands, half a dozen each, of ‘faeces lubricated sanitary napkins, condoms’ that I could manage to dish out of ‘scores of the same’ which were in the slush of  blocked manhole opposite to Loyola College, Nungambakkam today (5-11-2009).

Just this afternoon, as I was passing by, I could see that your department had, as usual sent a truck with a Jetroding machine and a couple of 'temporary staff' plus a crowbar 'minus' ofcourse soap, gloves, etc to clean up an overflowing sewer line.

The job of removing sanitary napkins, condoms, throw away plastics, clothe,debris, broken liquor bottles, mutton wastes, food wastes, vegetable wastes etc, etc., from sewer manholes has become such a permanent job for Sewerage workers on a daily basis in so many parts of our city and other towns. When this is so, why is the department keeping such temporary workers for daily wages of Rs.110 per day minus all benefits,  for such  permanent jobs, which is one of the most basic violation of the labour laws of the country.

I could see that except for the Jetroding machine, the crowbar and a pair of slippers, the temporary worker was not given any protective gear. After a half-hearted job at removing the blockage using the machine, he closed the lid of the manhole and heaped all the slush & debris mainly consisting of more than two dozens of sanitary napkins and condoms (the culprits for the sewer overflow) removed from the blockage, back on the manhole itself, with his bare hands.

If we employ only a temporary worker with no training for just Rs.110 per day as daily wages with neither social security nor protective gear, we will only get such a sloppy and substandard work.

When I enquired with him about why he is not using a soap (he is entitled to) to wash his hands and body parts of the stink and deadly virus that he was in touch with via the sludge, he replied that he doesn’t even know that he is eligible for a ration of soap from the department.  

I still managed to scoop out atleast 6 no.s each of used condoms and sanitary napkins with my bare hands to get myself photographed. When I returned home, the stench refused to go off my hands and finger nails, despite using half of an expensive soap and scrubbing and scrubbing and scrubbing.

As I ate my lunch  with my hands (despite the availability of spoon), I could ‘only’ empathize with the municipal workers of our country, how they continue to eat their lunch every day after ‘such calls of duty from our nation’.

As I type out this letter, 'the stink of faeces, condoms and napkins of men and women unknown to me' refuses to go out of my hands. I keep sniffing my finger nails to see if the stink is vanishing and may be, it will go in a day or two. But the stink of official apathy and public indifference will permanently stay in our citizenry unless some of us put our act together.

Only when we go, physically verify and photograph what causes frequent sewerage overflows and makes urban sanitation a nightmare in our country, we realize the seriousness of it all.

Hence, I once again urge you, in your capacity as the Chairman, to immediately convene the special committee setup by the honourable High court so that we can attempt to make our cities and towns a better place to live in, attempt to sensitise the citizens of the crime that they are indulging, the crime of indifference, the crime of flush and forget, the crime of letting  our Dalit brothers and migrant labourers eke out a living of manual scavenging or similar such 'reserved'occupations which keeps their lives and that of their families miserable and stinking throughout their lifetime.

Only the other day, I was witness to a migrant mother (employed by the contractor) inside what you would call (of course) the manhole of the Storm water drain. Her 2 year old child was playing dangerously outside the manhole on the platform.  For all practical purposes, the drain in which the mother was inside scooping out debris was an unofficial / unauthorised sewer line, a dust bin of plastic debris, broken beer bottles, with chicken waste thrown in as an add on. We conveniently call this a storm water drain. The Municipal Corporation and Metrowater Board, each think it is the other department's issue.

If we do not reverse the way, we the civil society and the Government manage urban sanitation in our state in the immediate future possible, we can only be fit to rename our department, the Department of Municipal Mis-administration and Sewerage Supply.

May I atleast now look forward to your initiative please.

Thank You and with Warm Regards,

Narayanan.A
Trustee- INFORSE IDL
Editor-PAADAM