The High Court, on Wednesday, asked the State government to consider the option of permitting private agencies in the management of municipal solid waste in the State.

A Division Bench consisting of Acting Chief Justice Manjula Chellur and Justice A.M. Shaffique made the observation while considering the Vilappilsala waste treatment plant case.

Samithi says Suchitwa Mission is trying to set up plant

The Lalur Malineekarana Viruddha Samara Samithi has protested against the alleged move to install a centralised waste management plant at Lalur. In a memorandum to Chief Minister Oommen Chandy on Thursday, the Samara Samithi alleged that the Suchitwa Mission had called applications for setting up a centralised plant at Lalur with 250-tonne capacity a day.

Faced with the challenge of finding a solution to the worsening waste management crisis across the State, the State government has initiated steps to establish integrated municipal solid waste treatment plants in five more urban local bodies in the State.

Suchitwa Mission, the government’s nodal agency for implementation of public sanitation and waste treatment schemes in the State, had earlier invited tenders to set up large scale waste treatment plants in Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi.

The talks held here on Wednesday between the Thrissur Corporation and the Lalur Malineekarana Viruddha Samara Samithi to solve garbage issue in the city failed to yield any result.

The garbage disposal from the city had been hit since last January after residents of Lalur, the garbage disposal site of Thrissur Corporation, blocked dumping of waste following a major fire at the dumping yard. Mayor I.P. Paul urged the Samara Samithi leaders to cooperate with the civic body to dispose of the garbage from the city.

District panchayat president M.T. Thomas on Monday said that a major focus of his development agenda is setting up of waste treatment plants especially in the towns where waste disposal has become a major problem.

Talking to The Hindu , Mr. Thomas said that waste disposal has created a major problem in the environmentally-sensitive district. Projects will be drawn in cooperation with block and grama panchayats to treat and periodically collect both bio-degradable and non-bio degradable wastes.

Despite the Kochi Corporation putting a ban on dumping of market waste in the Champakkara canal, residents here allege that the orders are not being followed.

A seminar on ‘effective waste treatment measures' jointly organised by the district chapter of the Institution of Engineers and the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP) here on Thursday called upon the city Corporation to take up a public campaign for solid-waste treatment by mobilising the support of all residents' associations, merchant forums, and commercial establishments.

The seminar, which pinpointed the futility of hunting for superior technologies for waste treatment, also urged the Corporation to promote the setting up of maximum number of vermicompost units and biogas plants at households to address the waste management crisis.

Chief Minister Oommen Chandy on Saturday said that the lack of successful models which could showcase the efficiency of the new waste management technologies to be introduced, was creating credibility issues among the public. He was speaking at the seminar on municipal waste management here.

“This is one of the greatest problems that the government is facing. Even if new technology is introduced, people are not willing to accept the same. There are no successful models to demonstrate the efficiency of the method,” he said.