Here residents share cleaning and waste disposal tasks

Thiruvananthapuram: The lockdown of the city might have helped to break the chain of Covid-19 transmission. But, it has also broken the ‘chain of daily life’ in city’s apartments. Residents, who had been served by helpers, security personnel and home nurses in apartments, have started to feel the pinch of the lockdown.
A quick, random check at city’s apartment complexes revealed that majority of the residents have risen to the new challenge.“We have around 70 apartments with 60% occupancy. We used to employ three cleaning workers. These days only one person can reach for work. The residents happily divide the rest of the work among themselves. They have taken up cleaning of the lobby and common area on a daily basis,” said Anand Thomas, secretary of Kowdiar Manor owners’ association.
Daily waste disposal is among the major issues faced by the residents post the lockdown. “We have an incinerator with which we burn the paper and sanitary waste. We have contracted a corporation authorized agency to collect the food waste, but they haven’t turned up for the last five days. We are planning to use incinerator as a temporary arrangement to burn wet waste. Plastic waste is collected and handed over at corporation collection points. We can keep that here till the crisis is over,” added Anand.
G T Raveendran, secretary, Samrudhi Thampurans Owners’ Association, Thampuranmukku, said that the residents have divided the cleaning work among themselves as the two housekeeping staff can’t reach for work due to police checking.
“There are 40 apartments here. The lobby area and floor are cleaned by apartment owners on rotation. It is not much difficult to maintain the area as we all work collectively. We have a waste converter to process organic waste. It was earlier managed by the cleaning staff, now the residents bring the waste down, drop that in the machine and one of us operates it. It will take 24 hours to convert it to manure,” said Raveendran.
The association also arranged bulk purchase of groceries, milk and vegetables for residents. “We have tied up for direct supply of milk, vegetables and grocery to all flats. Consumerfed mobile shop supplied grocery to us on Thursday,” said Raveendran.
Praveen Manikantan, a resident of SFS Cyberpalm, Akkulam, said the residents there had sent the food waste to a nearby farm as cleaning workers were absent.
Environmentalist Shibu K N said that it is the duty of each citizen to minimize the garbage generated in this hour of crisis. “Try to make new recipes by using the leftover vegetables, which we normally put in the bin. Also, try to use the vegetable waste as compost for plants. Even in a flat, this is possible as vegetable waste can be used as organic fertilizer for flowering plants on the balcony,” he said. Shibu also urges city residents to try to boost the confidence of cleaning workers. “They are scared too with a lot of news on disease all around. Try to segregate and wrap materials like used masks and gloves. Speak to them empathetically. Encourage them to wash hands in between their work,” he said.