Tambaram Corporation acknowledges gaps in addressing solid waste management, specifically open dumping. The municipal corporation had outsourced garbage collection in all five zones in 2023.
However, despite imposing hefty fines - ₹1 crore collected as penalty for not handling open dumping properly in July - on the contractor, Commissioner S. Balachander stated that there have been difficulties in addressing the issue. “The contractor has been warned. In two months, steps to curb the problem by improving the monitoring system would be taken,” he added.
Further, he plans to implement various measures to manage urban solid waste by bringing in more infrastructure funded by the State.
This is in response to a post by civic activist Pugalventhan Venkatesan, who, on X (formerly Twitter) claimed that there is a lack of infrastructure and workforce for segregating and processing solid waste at an intermediate transfer station in Pammal, close to Thiruneermalai. This station was formerly under Pammal Municipality but later merged with the Tambaram City Municipal Corporation in 2021.
The Commissioner said tonnes of legacy waste had been dumped over the years, especially during the floods in the transfer stations, and that preparations were under way to begin processing roughly 12 tonnes of waste per day within the next two months.
“Four new MRF [Material Recovery Facility] centres and a CND [Construction and Debris] disposal unit are to come up. Further, tenders are floated for a bio-CNG processing unit worth about ₹50 crore. All these are to be set up in a 50-acre land in Venkatamangalam.”
EOM
