Colombo’s clean glory re-established: Minister Ranawaka

Colombo has been transformed into one of the cleanest cities in Asia with tons of man-made waste turning into organic fertilizer, Megapolis and Western Development Minister Champika Ranawaka said yesterday.

The minister said the Western Development Ministry working together with the Colombo Municipal Council and surrounding Councils, the Land Reclamation Ministry and other relevant institutions, have put an end to the city’s prolonged practice of disposing garbage into water channels, soil systems and paddy fields, introducing scientific waste management methods.

“We transformed Colombo into a clean haven not by force or by intimidation or by way of using white van or by deploying military personnel in every corner, but through dedication on the part of every one and by working together,” Ranawaka said. Thanking Municipal Commissioners, Public Health Inspectors, the Police, the line ministries, engineers of waste management units, the media, the local governments, the provincial authorities, provincial ministers, the Navy and Army officers for their dedication and support extended in achieving a clean Colombo, Reawake said mountains of garbage which had become a hazard to the city is being turned into organic fertilizer.

“More than 400 tons of organic fertilizer are produced from the waste collected in Colombo and the suburbs under Mihijaya Fertilizer Project carried out by the Megapolis and Western Development Ministry together with the Sri Lanka Land Reclamation Ministry,” the minister said after announcing the launching of Mihijaya Project at the Colombo Town Hall.

He said it will be a duty of everyone to support Mihijaya for it will be one of the landmark waste management programmes in Sri Lanka to address waste problems on a sustainable footing.

“We have adopted a method of disposing mountains of human waste into our soil systems, water channels and the sea in Colombo and the surrounding regions,” he said. This has been a destructive method of waste disposal, he said.

“There is no point in blaming governments or politicians on this account because every time the political system or the authorities tried to solve the issue, they were prevented by a rising tide of protest campaigns and numerous political distractions,” Ranawaka said. 

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