An avoidable disaster

The Sinhala Tamil New Year brings with it fresh hopes of prosperity and peace as communities reflect on a year gone by and prepare with optimism for what the next is to bring. For those in Meethotamulla, the New Year brought on an unthinkable disaster, as the collapse of the garbage mountain destroyed homes and claimed the lives of so many.

The garbage heap, estimated to be around 300 feet, collapsed following a fire and buried over a 100 houses in the area with the death toll now surpassing 20. Homes lay in ruin and families shattered due to the inability of successive governments to find a lasting solution to a problem that communities have been protesting against at length. The Government had announced plans to remove the hazard under and infrastructure plan after the continuous protestations of the people of the area – a measure that seems tragically belated.

It is simply astounding that the most basic measures that are crucial to the wellbeing of citizens take governments years to even put into action but self-serving political measures get swift attention. In truth, a disaster has been knocking at our doors and, barring a tragedy of this magnitude, the warning signs have been evident to those who cared to see.

The Government’s plans to simply relocate the garbage mountain at Meethotamulla to Ekala were met with fierce protests by the people of the area, and with good reason. Successive governments have been done little by way of building recycle plants in the country, with the policymakers claiming that the process would take two years, as if to suggest that this problem has not existed for decades.

Seven hundred metric tonnes of garbage generated in the early ’90s in the Colombo metropolitan area has now quadrupled. At the national level, more than 40,000 tonnes of hazardous waste is being produced per annum. Solid and hazardous waste is unloaded into open dumps, causing serious health hazards and burnt in the open air, where they cause land and water pollution. During the last two decades, dumping destroyed almost all the wetlands around Colombo. Animals perished choking on garbage and those who care to protest were given the cold shoulder or hauled away by the Police.

Meanwhile, garbage heaps continue to form, mount and be burnt in several locations around the country with environmentalists believing that there are as many as 58 unmanaged dumps in the Western Province alone. However, apart from the protests of the surrounding people and environmentalists, the injurious effect it has on human beings has not been felt in full until now.

Law suits against offending companies, World Bank loans for better management of municipality dump sites, promotion of recycling and domestic waste disposal through compost making are all tested and failed methods in Sri Lanka. Yet these ideas have taken root and flourished elsewhere in the world. 

People continue to remain oblivious to their responsibilities regarding garbage due to a lack of awareness or concern. The Government and much of the public were content to let the brunt of this situation be borne by a few, but now faced with a new reality with the dawn of the New Year, it is up to everyone to force the hands that procrastinated for so long to ensure that history never repeats itself.