RailEnquiry

Minister asks Corporation to resume project . Garbage removal will be resumed on Thursday after a week-long break.According to sources, the garbage collected from the city will be taken to Kochuveli Railway Station for the platform construction project.On Wednesday Urban Affairs Minister Manjalamkuzhy Ali held talks with Mayor K. Chandrika.He requested the Corporation to resume the transport of garbage to Kochuveli.Although the Corporation had earlier transported 86 truckloads of garbage to the railway station, the project was shelved following opposition by local residents. Corporation officials also cited technical reasons saying that the garbage could no longer be dumped at the railway station as access to the area that remained to be land-filled was difficult.“The plan is to take a couple of loads on a test basis and see if we can get it to the site using smaller vehicles and smaller compacter to compact the dumped waste. According to Railway officials, there is scope for filling around 700 tonnes of waste at Kochuveli. Since we have no other option to dispose of municipal waste, we are trying to leverage the facility offered by the Railways,’’ an official said.The Mayor said though a committee formed by the Corporation had found that garbage dumping at the railway station was no more feasible, the Corporation had decided to cooperate with the State-government’s proposal as disposing accumulating waste was an urgent priority.

Panel visit

“Before we stopped transporting garbage to Kochuveli, a committee headed by Deputy Mayor G. Happykumar had visited the site at the railway station to see if the dumping was being done scientifically and if there was scope to dump waste there.

“Noted environmental expert R.V.G. Menon was also part of this committee and we found that it was actually not feasible to dump garbage at the railway station. But now that the State government is resolute about taking garbage to Kochuveli, we do not want to stand in the way as garbage disposal is our top priority now,” Ms Chandirka said.

A similar proposal of using garbage as filling material for platform construction at Mukumpuzha was successfully implemented.

Around 42 truckloads of waste were transported to Murukumpuzha railway station as part of the project.