Students find corporation staff burning trash across Katpadi

The two students, S Narendran and V Sanjay, told this newspaper that they had written a petition signed by 50 residents to the collector on February 23, and sent copies of it to the Vellore corporation commissioner, health officer, District pollution control board, National Green Tribunal and the Katpadi and Vellore DMK MLAs (Duraimurugan and P Kathikeyan) without any response.

The students collected photos and videos of the conservancy staff burning garbage and accumulated garbage in Katpadi residential areas including Mathinagar, Kottai Amman nagar, VGN Rao nagar, VIT main road, Gandhi nagar and Balaji nagar while the Corporation commissioner C Sivasubramaniam used to claim that only degradable trash was converted to manure while plastic was sent to a cement factory in Ariyalur district.

“We also included the visual evidence with our petition to the collector to prove the truth of our letter, but there has been no response from any official,” said the students.

“We had to keep the windows of our house shut all the time because of the foul odour from garbage left accumulated and from the smoke from burning it. Fed up with the act, we decided to take matters into our hands, and collect evidence. We then sent them to the senior officials,” the students added.

The students told the staff that they were working on a project and made the conservancy staff talk to them about how the garbage collected was disposed. A conservancy truck driver told them that plastic trash was collected and taken to Pallikuppam near Katpadi where “it was burnt”. The revelation was caught on camera.

When contacted, Commissioner Sivasubramanaian did not respond to the questions.