Garbage presents an unsightly picture all over Usilampatti

Residents of Usilampatti struggle with widespread garbage in public places, despite failed attempts to address the issue.

Residents of Usilampatti are an aggrieved lot as every public place in the town is awash with garbage, and their complaints to the municipal officials are to no avail.

Every public place - be it the busy Usilampatti bus stand, market, government library, municipality office - is strewn with waste. These are places visited by hundreds of people every day and the garbage mounds testify to the improper waste disposal system in the town. Conservancy workers never remove garbage from these places, say the residents.  

C. Jyoti Basu, one of the residents, says there used to be a garbage dump on the municipality office premises where waste collected from residents and commercial establishments were segregated as bio-degradable and non-bio-degradable.  But after it stopped working due to a snag, the dump was shifted to Uthappanaickanoor, eight km away from Usilampatti.  There also the snag continued and so segregation of waste has stopped altogether.  

It 2018, with a view to putting in place an effective solid waste management system, micro compost yard (MCC) was constructed and the garbage dump with the facility to segregate waste was set up, say municipality sources.  

While launching the segregation exercise, it was announced that all biodegradable waste would be converted into manure and the non-biodegradable waste given to industries or for recycling. But none of them is in practice now, says Mr. Basu.  Also, door-to-door collection of garbage from households is also not proper, he says.  

With these facilities having become defunct, lethargy has set in among conservancy workers in clearing waste from public places, the reason why there are piles of garbage everywhere, says another resident Jayakumar.  

Advocate J. Praveen, who gave a representation to this effect to Madurai Collector M.S. Sangeetha, says sand accumulated on the roadside near Thevar statue and court are never removed.   Whenever a car or heavy vehicle passes through these places, the sand along with the waste are blown into the air, causing serious air pollution.