Attractive incentives given to Vellore residents to encourage garbage segregation at source

The initiative was consequent to conservancy staff complaining regularly about residents of the ward either refusing to segregate garbage or doing it half heartedly resulting in problems for workers in the corporation’s composting centres. “Hence in December last, we decided to encourage women residents as they are the people directly involved in garbage segregation we announced the awarding of gold and silver coins to winners chosen by lot” said Zone II sanitary officer Siva Kumar.

Another senior civic official seeking anonymity said “we knew the project would work when social activist Dinesh Saravanan volunteered to provide gold and silver coins from his own funds.”

When asked Dinesh Saravanan told DT Next, “I purchased two half gram gold coins (called kasu in Tamil) and four 5 gram silver coins at a total cost of around Rs 8000. When the jeweler came to know the reason we were buying the coins he voluntarily provided a discount which was also helpful.”

The feedback of how residents (there are 1100 houses in the ward) was collected from conservancy staff who covered the area daily and based on this residents who performed the best were shortlisted and finally on Saturday, the winners were chosen by lot, officials said.

However this soon resulted in those left out demanding to know why they were also not provided the prizes as they too had contributed by observing proper segregation methods. It was left to civic officials to pacify them. The gold coins were handed over by Corporation Commissioner C Sankaran.