Social service organisations in Mannargudi have come forward to assist the civic body in maintaining cleanliness and raise awareness on source segregation of solid wastes among residents in the town.
The town, an important centre for business and a hub for the floating population in view of the famous temples within the municipality, generates around 20 tonnes of garbage every day.
At present the garbage collected from the town is being dumped at the compost yard which is already overflowing with unsegregated garbage deposited there for more than three decades.
As per the norm, the Mannargudi civic body should have a compost yard measuring not less than seven acres to handle the garbage generated in the town since it has a total population of little over the 70,000, according to official sources.
Further, the efforts taken by the civic body to ensure that the compost yard receives segregated wastes in order to generate bio-manure from the bio-degradable waste under solid waste management exercise hit a roadblock as most of the residents and as well as the trading community continued to deposit unsegregated waste at places convenient to them throughout the town.
For example, some of the traders and others near the temples and the major market areas used to deposit the garbage at open places or near closed business establishments during late-night hours making the collection exercise a laborious process for the outsourced garbage collectors, sources lamented.
Hence, the civic body decided to rope in social service organisations functioning in the town in order to create awareness among the residents and trading community people to keep the town neat and tidy.
A meeting in this regard was convened recently where the social service organisations have agreed to work with the civic body in creating an awareness among the people about the advantages of segregating waste at the source itself.
For this purpose, they assured the civic authorities that the organisations would distribute pamphlets and make public announcements through autorickshaws fitted with public address systems. They would also convene awareness programmes for the trading community, sources added.
