Anyone passing by the intersection of Nehru Street and Anna Street in Chitlapakkam would be welcomed by garbage strewn all around the street corner. Colloquially referred to as ‘Gangai Amman Kulam corner’, it soon came to be known as the ‘ugly corner’. Not any more.
In a three-week long effort, the residents of Chitlapakkam banded together and cleaned up the corner tainted with garbage and reclaimed it. “We had to take the matter into our own hands when repeated complaints to the Chitlapakkam Town Panchayat did not evoke any response. However, when we started clearing up the spot, workers from the panchayat gave us a hand in removing the garbage,” says R. Balachander, a resident and one of the organisers of the clean-up drive.
When the clean-up started, the volunteers often had to thumb their noses, for the stench was too strong. Plastic trash, rotten vegetables and fruits were lying in heaps and festering for months. Stray cattle and dogs were feasting on the waste. But the most difficult of the tasks was to remove an old car that had been rusting there for nearly three years, says Sunil Jayaram of Chitlapakkam Rising, which is spearheading the clean-up.
The garbage mounds were cleared and the ground leveled, but in order to reclaim the spot completely, the abandoned car had to go. Thankfully for the residents, a mechanic volunteered to tow the car and hand it over to the Chromepet Traffic Police, who agreed to move it to a scrap yard.
Once the car and a pair of heavy chairs were out of the way, the street corner looked wide and spacious; but the team knew that garbage would find its way in just a few hours if the space was left open. So, they secured it with a wired fence. They bought the fencing material with their own money.
“When the garbage bins used to be here, they were always overflowing. When the panchayat took them away three months ago to promote source segregation and door-to-door collection, garbage still kept coming to the street corner. Citizens’ indifference is appalling,” Sunil adds.
The next plan is to convert the space into a two-wheeler parking lot, as the intersection is often prone to traffic congestion. For now, they have placed a warning board against littering and the volunteers will keep a watchful eye on people still trying to dump trash until the spot is put to better use.