TIRUCHY: A woman’s statue, holding buckets with segregated waste, in a vehicle announcing the importance of recycling is a sight that city residents would have hardly forgotten. All this was done last year by the city corporation as part of the Reduce, Recycle, Reuse (RRR) initiative of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA).
Under the initiative, residents were encouraged to give various recyclable materials, including old clothes, to micro compost centres (MCC). Clothes collected through the initiative were meant to be used for making cloth bags and given to traders or vendors free of cost. TNIE recently conducted an inquiry and ground check to know more about the cloth collected through the initiative and found irregularities.
TNIE first filed an RTI with the corporation enquiring about details of the quantity of clothes collected through the initiative and what was done with them. The public information officer replied, “During the campaign period from May 20, 2023, to May 31, 2023, the corporation collected about two tonnes of clothes. Good clothes were given to the needy, and other clothes were stitched as cloth bags with the help of NGO Saahas. The cloth bags were also distributed by the same agency. The corporation was not directly involved in stitching and distribution of clothes.”
When contacted, the NGO stated that it received about 1,700 kg of old clothes from the corporation from which 600 reusable cloth bags were made. Around 150-200 kg of clothes deemed unfit for stitching were sent to the MCCs.
The upcycled cloth bags were distributed to shop vendors and customers who brought plastic bags to the Uzhavar Sandhai in Thennur, KK Nagar, and the daily vegetable market in Woraiyur.
When asked about the approximate weight of 600 bags and details of clothes given back to the MCC, Anas Mohammed, project manager, Saahas, said, “We did not measure the exact weight of each bag. The approximate total weight of the 600 bags would be around 1.5 to 1.7 tonnes, each weighing an average of 3-5 grams.” They added that clothes deemed unfit for stitching were sent to the MCC in ward 24.
Since the math didn’t add up and there was a lack of clarity regarding the unfit clothes sent to the MCC, TNIE contacted MCCs in all five zones. They dismissed the claim of having received any clothes from the NGO. A senior corporation official also stated that they have not received any clothes from Saahas.
When discussing the whole event with a retired senior police officer and resident, K Padmanabhan, he criticised the corporation. “The residents gave the clothes to the corporation. Thus, it was the duty of the corporation to monitor the making of bags and keep records about their distribution. They cannot pass the buck to some NGO and claim they have no role in distribution,” he said.
