Is the Mayor of Colombo aware?

It is hard to believe that the Mayor of Colombo is aware of many things that are happening in her organisation.

For example, down Torrington Road, Colombo 5 (in front of the Jawatte Cemetery) there is a Municipal garbage collection centre. We the civic conscious citizens of the city were very happy about it as the centre provided a  place to hand over our dry garbage (polythene, cans , batteries, etc.) which we assumed were sorted and recycled or disposed in an environment friendly way. 

Many of us collected such garbage at home and then transported the stuff in our own vehicles to this place feeling we were doing a service to the city and country. One time it had a friendly staff who would happily carry the bags in and even talk about environmental issues with us.

However, now for about three months things have changed here. The old staff has been moved out and some unfriendly employees of the CMC have taken over the place.

Last week when I took my garbage bag there one of them told me that the “machine” has broken down and they are not collecting garbage any longer.

Obviously, they want us to either bury the toxic stuff in our gardens or hand them over with our bio waste to the garbage van to be buried in the normal rubbish dump. This is obviously a very bad thing for the soil and environment.

Our present Mayor of Colombo made out that she was an able and enlightened person. On the contrary, it looks like under her the city is going back. Surely even a young school-going child knows the importance of safe and soil-friendly disposal of hard garbage.

Over to you, the Mayor of Colombo.

R. C. De Silva