Meetotamulla – a tragedy that was waiting to happen
23 April 2017
Meetotamulla was a tragedy that was waiting to happen. With over 30
people, including children killed, millions of rupees worth of property
damage caused, dozens whose houses were buried and at risk of further
rubbish slides and methane gas explosions forced to evacuate their
homes, the concerned authorities have been forced to open their eyes.
The Rip Van Winkles who have now awakened are making what amends they
can - not out of their own pockets or the millions made by selling
their duty free vehicle permits, but out of the public exchequer. The
people have been treated to the sight of various functionaries handing
new homes and compensation over the evening television newscasts. But
as one undoubtedly grateful recipient said, there are others waiting
for relief - kattiya innawa to use her own words.
President
Maithripala Sirisena went on public record last week that there was an
extortion racket that has been long going on where trucks bringing
garbage had to pay thousand or thousand five hundred each to drive into
the dump and so much to leave. If this was so, and there is no reason
to believe otherwise, why was this racket allowed to continue? The
cleaning companies or the contractors they hired for the job of
transporting the rubbish to the dump obviously did not pay this kappan
out of their own pockets - all that was surely factored into their
bid-prices for the rubbish clearing contracts. So the ever-suffering
public had as always to pick up the tab. Why was this racket allowed to
flourish all these years? The police no doubt would say there were no
complaints for them to investigate. The ubiquitous underworld, well
patronized by the local and national political Mafia, obviously used
their muscle to good effect.
The reams that continue to be
written about the tragedy that should never have been allowed to happen
carry a welter of allegations against various responsible authorities.
Garbage disposal or solid waste management, to use a term now in
common currency, is not rocket science. There have been news reports
during the past many years of composting the biodegradable rubbish for
use as fertilizer and the generation of electricity. Possibilities of
recycling plastic waste have been bruited around for as long as most
can remember. Various proposals have been made over the years to
getting a move on in coming to grips with the problem but nothing
happened. Public pressure halted further dumping at the Bloemendhal
site where fires were common. The scene then moved to Meetotamulla. The
anguished cry of the victims is that "we were there, sometimes for
generations, before the area was made a dumping site." Their lament is
only now being heard after the New Year’s Day tragedy.
Predictably
the blame game has been stridently played and fingers pointed in all
directions. Nobody will quarrel with the prime minister’s exhortation
that it is time that this stopped and there is a united effort to
resolve the problem. But whether that can or will happen, given what has
already taken place and the jockeying for preference votes in populous
Kolonnawa where Meetotamulla is located, is the question. The fact is
that both the Rajapaksa and the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administrations
were in office while the problem festered before it exploded. The UNP
has been running the Colombo Municipal Council for many years and
President Sirisena has been Minister of Environment. Former President
Mahinda Rajapaksa made a gratuitous comment that he was en route to
resolving the problem by transporting garbage by rail for landfills at
limestone quarries in the Puttalam area when he was defeated. Thereafter
nothing happened, he said. He should know better than make this kind
of remark. Whether such a scheme was viable and feasible and whether
people in those areas would have allowed it is a moot point.
Given
what happened at Meetotamulla, nobody will be surprised that people in
possible alternative dumping sites are protesting loudly and
preventing their use. Nobody wants somebody else’s rubbish dumped on
their doorsteps. So much so that the government had to invoke
provisions of the Public Security Ordinance and declare garbage
clearance and disposal an essential service. The harsh reality is that
garbage that is collected must be disposed. Protests against such
action will sometimes be spontaneous; but there will always be an
under-current of vested interests, for political or venal reasons,
adding fuel to the flames. Such elements will favor not just water
cannons or teargas to disperse protesting mobs. If live bullets are
fired and people are killed and injured, as happened at Rathupaswala
under the previous dispensation, so much the better for such elements.
While the invoking of Emergency laws to do a job that must be done is
unavoidable, there must be no heavy handed over-reaction as happened
when protestors brought traffic on the Kandy Road to a halt over the
alleged pollution of their wells by a neighboring factory.
A
long festering problem such as garbage in greater Colombo and other
urban centers obviously cannot be fixed overnight. Meetotamulla has
provided the incentive to come to grips with it and there is evidence
that the wheels are now turning. Vultures who fed on the garbage, such
as the kappan Mafia and political and bureaucratic elements looking for
a buck out of any possible recycling solution are not going to creep
into their holes because of what has been said post-disaster. Now that
the resolution of the problem has become more urgent, there will be
those who see richer pickings now licking their lips in anticipation of
greater returns. The lessons of the tragedy must be quickly learned:
we cannot let time bombs keep clicking until they explode. The
politicians and bureaucrats are not the sole culprits. All of us who
failed to generate the public opinion that might have shaken the
decision makers out of their lethargy must also share the blame.
No comments:
Post a Comment