April 26, 2013, 12:00 pm


Last week, many print media reported on the Meetotamulla waste dump and how people in the area were protesting over the lack of interest by the authorities for the hygienic disposal of the waste.

Meanwhile, the Colombo Municipality was looking for solutions for the waste disposal problem and your paper also reported that the new environment minister has said he will use it for road construction purposes.

It was in the 1980s that I foresaw this problem and suggested one of the best solutions would be to set up an anaerobic digester in each town, which will collect all garbage and then use the biogas produced to feed the national grid in the form of electricity and the article which appeared in the editorial page of the Ceylon Daily News was tittled ‘Biogas generators for power, fertiliser and pollution control’. This is a common practice elsewhere in the world. Unfortunately, no action was taken by the then authorities.

Again, when Karu Jayasuriya became the Mayor of Colombo in the latter 90s, I wrote to him that this would be one of the best options for the CMC. To his credit, he brought this to the notice of the engineers there, but unfortunately, they failed to take action, but said that the land fill option was a cheaper remedy, without thinking of the long term consequences. Now we are back to square one and problems have aggravated to a flash point in the Meethotamulla area, proving what I foresaw in the 1980s.

This lack of foresight is a common feature in all spheres of activity in the general governance of the country, and as a result, ultimately it is the general public which has to carry the burden and suffer in silence.

As regards waste, what other countries are doing and how they have used it as a renewable resource, rather than refuse, where they have turned refuse into money a spinning enterprise is briefly given in the annexed report titled ‘Waste Conversion in the US East Coast’.

It is time that we put into effect such solutions, at least now, and part of the money generated could be used to uplift the living standards of the people of Meethotamulla, who have suffered in silence under most unhygienic conditions for so long. This can be the best Sinhala New Year gift that the Colombo Municipality could provide to the people of Meethotamulla.

Dr. M. W. N. Dharmawardene

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