The confusion over who holds the power to accord technical clearance for the Thumboormozhi model aerobic bins, the major component of the city Corporation’s ‘My City, Beautiful City’ clean-up drive, seems to be over with the Corporation authorities on Friday submitting the application to the Kerala State Suchitwa Mission.
For the past few days, the engineering wing of the civic body had been in the eye of a storm as the technical sanction application which was submitted first to them was pending. The first objection from the wing was regarding the lack of a site plan. Once this was submitted, officials of the wing said that they did not have the powers to approve it.
Health standing committee Chairperson S. Pushpalatha said the engineering wing could sanction waste-processing units of only up to one-tonne capacity.
“The aerobic bins we have installed have a capacity of around 2 tonnes. The engineering wing does not have the power to grant technical sanction as per a recent government order. So we approached the Suchitwa Mission and we expect it to be cleared soon,” she said.
Logic questionedT.M. Thomas Isaac, MLA, had recently questioned the logic of not granting technical sanction to aerobic bins in a city which had 73,000 pipe compost units, which worked the same way as the aerobic bins. He had said that there was no need to check whether the bins were ‘scientific’ as experts from the Kerala Veterinary University had approved them. He had said that the Corporation engineers only had to check the strength of the structure and the cost factor.
The delay in sanctioning the aerobic bins has hit the cleanup drive as most of the waste dumps inside the city are already closed.
