Citizen Connect: Illegal cow shed run inside Sekkadu dump yard worries Avadi residents

Garbage from entire Avadi municipality and surrounding areas ends up at the dump yard in Sekkadu. The 11-acre dump yard has nearly 52,000 metric tonnes of garbage and receives 90 metric tonnes of garbage on a daily basis.

While the Avadi municipality in January had announced that bio-mining process would be introduced in February to segregate the waste, the dump yard still remains an eyesore without any improvement. While the municipality planned to procure 136 battery-operated vehicles and about 30 vehicles for garbage collection, but nothing has transpired yet, say residents.

What is worse that a cow shed is being run from within the dump yard and officials have not taken any action against it, said the residents. “Cattle reared in the shed are feeding on the garbage throughout the day. The men, who run the cow shed, do not allow public to see what is happening inside. But the milk yielded from the cattle is distributed across Avadi. It is definitely not a healthy atmosphere to rear cattle and animal welfare authorities should take it up,” said V Loganathan, a college student and resident of Avadi.

Murali Kanth, another resident of Avadi, said that biomedical waste from hospitals around the locality is also being dumped in Sekkadu. “Conservancy workers, who collect waste from households, are strict and accept the waste only when it is source-segregated. Otherwise, they just refuse to receive the garbage and move their tricycle to the next door. While we appreciate it, what is the point when biomedical waste is also dumped in the yard without any regulations. And I can’t imagine the repercussions of cattle feeding on such waste,” he said.

Several attempts to reach the Sekkadu village administrative officer and Avadi municipality officials proved futile.