UDF councillors pick holes in Minister’s claims about Brahmapuram

UDF councillors in the Kochi Corporation visiting the civic body’s solid waste treatment plant at Brahmapuram.
| Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

A delegation of the Opposition United Democratic Front (UDF) in the Kochi Corporation Council that visited the Brahmapuram solid waste treatment plant on Tuesday sought to pick holes in claims by Local Self-Government Minister M.B. Rajesh about the proposed bio-park at Brahmapuram and the declaration that the compressed biogas plant (CBG) there would be commissioned by March-end.

After a visit to Brahmapuram, the Minister had played cricket on a plot recovered after removing piled-up waste through biomining as an advertisement for the changing face of the place. The UDF councillors accused the Minister of trying to fool the people through the staged game of cricket.

When 230 tonnes of waste are being brought to Brahmapuram daily, the black soldier fly plant is now able to treat only 75 tonnes. Since the massive fire outbreak at Brahmapuram in 2023, biodegradable waste is being merely dumped at the plant without any treatment. Waste has piled up along the previously functional windrow compost plant and also along a stretch where biomining has been completed. Even vehicles are finding it hard to manoeuvre through the plant following which waste is even being dumped along the road, they said.

The councillors alleged that the only activity being done at Brahmapuram now was moving waste to both sides of the road using earthmovers. The Minister and the Mayor had sought to mislead people by creating the impression that the place had undergone a sea change, by playing cricket in the area allocated for the CBG plant, they said.

The Minister had not even bothered to inspect the shortcomings pointed out in land-filling during his visit. There was no project for treatment of plastic waste while presenting the master plan for the biopark. This was despite the fact the people of Kochi had to inhale poisonous gas when plastic waste heaps caught fire. Even the draft of the master plan was not discussed in the council, UDF leaders Antony Kureethara and M.G. Aristotle alleged.