Councillor’s poster ‘raises a stink’ on Stalin's visit day

VELLORE: A councillor of Pernambut Municipality aggrieved over the inaction of the local body in clearing the accumulated garbage made a novel effort of printing and pasting posters highlighting the problem across the town on Thursday to draw the attention of Chief Minister MK Stalin, who was on a visit to the region. However, the Municipal Commissioner ordered the immediate removal of posters on Thursday.

Councillor C Abdul Hamid put up posters demanding to know in which area the contract conservancy were deployed as Rs 15 lakh per month was reportedly being spent on garbage clearance. The poster also claimed that conservancy staff were paid only Rs 5,000 as against the actual Rs 12,000 and out of the sanctioned strength of 114 conservancy staff, only 80 were on rolls.

The posters were put up at all prominent places, including the median on Ambur Road. When Commissioner Subhashini got wind of the move, she immediately ordered to remove the posters.

However, garbage menace is not something new to the town. A few days ago, ward 8 councillor Mujamil Ahamed annoyed at garbage not being removed from his ward and drains not being cleared collected the uncleared waste from his area and dumped it in front of the municipal office. Municipal officials admitted that there were some issues with the garbage clearance as the work on the dump yard was progressing.

However, what peeves residents is the slow pace of work on the dump yard coming up at Tharaikadu on V Kotta Road. The site chosen for the dump yard is a rocky terrain and due digging up the area is taking time. This has been causing problems in garbage clearance. Previously, there was no fixed site and garbage removed from the town was dumped in remote areas in the periphery of the town. But, due to opposition from locals in those areas, the civic body identified Tharaikadu site where work is under way to set up a dump yard.