Pallavaram civic chief takes a ‘cheap’ shot at city dustbins

Pallavaram civic chief takes a ‘cheap’ shot at city dustbins
Published Date: 2/13/2009 - (NIE)

G Saravanan

Chennai, February 12: CHENNAI may be the biggest city corporation in the State, but it apparently cuts costs and corners in its line of duty. The corporation’s recently acquired trash cans have received a trashing from the municipal chairman of a suburb, Pallavaram. He has described them as ‘cheap’ and ‘not durable’.

The four lakh dustbins procured by Chennai Corporation at a cost of Rs 12 each for distribution among slum dwellers - to encourage source segregation and help them keep their surroundings hygienic - cannot be compared to the Rs 69 a piece bins that the Pallavaram Municipality proposes to buy for its 16,000 slum dwellers, said the municipal chairman, E Karunanithi.

Rubbishing a news report comparing the rates and saying that the municipality had gone in for dustbins each costing a whopping Rs 69 when the cost of the bins bought by the Chennai Corporation was just Rs 12, Karunanithi defended his action by throwing muck at the capital’s trash cans.

He said that while many states and cities in the country were using bins made by different companies using high-class plastics, the Chennai Corporation purchased dustbins from the Central government’s Central Institute of Plastics Engineering & Technology (CIPET), Chennai. “CIPET’s dustbins are developed from recycled and low-grade plastics, hence cheap,” he said.

The soon-to-be purchased bins for Pallavaram Municipality from a private party K M S Traders are made of high-class ‘virgin grade’ plastic that come with a lid unlike Chennai’s bins, which are without lids, he said. Besides, the city’s dustbins have a capacity of eight litres as against the 10-litre capacity of Pallavaram’s bins.

The rate difference between these bins is due to the size variation and the thickness of the plastic, said Karunanithi. Incidentally, the adjacent municipalities — Alandur and Tambaram — have also decided to buy dustbins for their slum settlements from private contractors