Tiruverkadu locals fear disease outbreak due to piling garbage

P Swarna Devi, a resident of Ayanambakkam, which comes under Ward 1 of the Tiruverkadu municipality, told DT Next that everyone in the locality feared that diseases may spread due to the uncleared garbage.

“During recent rains, garbage disposed on streets got soaked and this led to rampant mosquito breeding in the area. Already, a few cases of dengue have been reported in the locality and more such diseases may break out if the garbage menace goes unchecked,” Swarna Devi said.

According to locals, at least two persons, M Karthik (20) and R Udayakumar (7), who have been diagnosed with dengue, were still undergoing treatment.

When contacted, Tiruverkadu Municipal Commissioner S Chitra admitted that garbage was not being cleared regularly in the municipality limits owing to shortage of manpower.

“We are aware of the issue and it will be resolved as soon as possible. We sought 192 temporary sanitary workers from a manpower agency, but got only half the number. Now efforts are on to get the full strength through other sources and the problem will soon be addressed,” Chitra said.

She added that the municipality was recently sanctioned funds for 33 battery-operated vehicles and five light commercial vehicles for garbage clearing work.

“Basically, we are segregating garbage into saleable and non-saleable components.

While the saleable garbage is sold as scrap, non-saleable is sent to a cement factory in Ariyalur.

The degradable waste is being sent to the six micro compost centres in the municipality,” Chitra said.

The Commissioner further said that recently a sanitary inspector was also transferred out after complaints started pouring in of uncleared garbage.