Manual labourers used to clear trash from lake

CHENNAI: Catching up with the rest of the world, the Chennai Corporation recently showcased cutting-edge technology devices such as amphibians, robots and aquatic weed removers to remove garbage from waterbodies. However, the Pallavaram municipality, which is close to the city corporation limits, has been employing manual labourers to remove garbage from the Putheri Lake since Wednesday. As on Sunday, hardly 50 per cent of the garbage had been removed.

In the last two weeks, heaps of garbage was dumped into the lake by miscreants. Five labourers have been manually removing the garbage, and the work is progressing at snail’s pace. All this, when the city corporation has machines that can directly get into rivers and remove garbage using hydraulic forklifts.

“We do not work for the municipality. We are just daily wage labourers, who were roped in to do the cleaning. It’s very hard to get deep in this lake to sideline the garbage,” one of the workers said. 
Activists note that loads and loads of garbage were dumped into the lake, and at this pace, the municipality might take weeks to complete the task of cleaning the lake.

When contacted, Municipality officials said that unlike the Chennai corporation, they lacked huge amount of funds to procure cutting-edge equipment. “We have an earth mover to shift the garbage from the bunds of the lake. We will see if any machines can be rented,” an official said. The garbage removed from the Putheri lake would be taken to the municipality segregation site.