Chennai’s air quality dips after Deepavali; GCC ramps up work to clear firecracker waste

The AQI was at 327 in Manali, under Zone 2 of the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC),  as of 10 am. It was followed by Velachery (322), Arumbakkam (262) and Alandur (253) among others.

As per the National Air Quality Index measures, the AQI between 0 and 50 is ‘good’ and 51 -100 is ‘satisfactory’, while 101-200 is ‘moderate’. A figure between 200-300 is ‘poor’; 301-400 is ‘very poor’; and 401-500 is rated ‘severe’.

Meanwhile over the last few days, the GCC had been sensitising the residents to segregate hazardous waste separately and hand them over to the conservancy workers. The civic body had readied separate jute bags and vehicles to carry these cracker wastes from all the 15 zones in the city.

The GCC Commissioner J Radhakrishnan who inspected the spot at Akkarai noted that over 19,000 conservancy workers are involved by the civic body to segregate the waste generated in the city. He said the workers carefully collect the cracker waste in jute bags and bring them to the material recovery centre and resource recovery centres.

This is expected to be safely transported to the industrial waste plant centre at Gummidipoondi for further processing as per the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) norms.

Chennai Corp conservancy workers are making every possible effort to clear the waste generated by public from bursting of crackers. The residents have been sensitized to dispose hazardous waste separately which will be collected in jute bags by workers. #Deepavali #Crackerwaste pic.twitter.com/YMDb4luXui

— Janardhan Koushik (@koushiktweets) November 13, 2023

“We aim to complete the work by Monday night or at the least by Tuesday morning,” Radhakrishnan said. He further thanked the workers for diligently carrying out their duty during festivals like Deepavali.

According to GCC’s Chief Engineer N Mahesan, around 180 tonnes of cracker waste has been generated since Sunday in the city. It has been sent to the industrial waste plant centre at Gummidipoondi for processing, he said.

Addressing the reporters on Monday, he said if needed the civic body would be deploying additional battery-operated vehicles to collect the waste. “We are now in the process of removing the waste generated on bus routes and will take this forward in other interior routes as well. We wanted to complete the work without any backlog as much as possible before the rains as it will be difficult post the rainfall,” he said.

Mahesan added that similar to last year, they expect around 210-220 tonnes of cracker waste to have been generated this year as well. The public have been cooperative in depositing the cracker waste separately due to awareness campaigns by GCC, he added.

Meanwhile, the Greater Chennai Police (GCP) has issued a data wherein a total of 554 cases have been registered in the past two days for bursting crackers beyond the permitted time by the Supreme Court.

The state police had informed that residents can burst firecrackers for only two hours from 6 am to 7 am and 7 pm to 8 pm.

A team was engaged by the officials to monitor the city. Of the total 581 cases, the team of officials engaged to monitor the city booked eight cases involving firecracker shops flouting state government rule. Around 19 other cases were registered in connection to bursting of crackers with excessive noise.