Slum turns trash heap into garden……Mansi Choksi |
Mumbai: Sujata Bhimrao Howad, a resident of the serpentine slum of Ambedkar Nagar, which squats between a water pipeline and the Mithi River, remembers how she would toss the waste from her home just outside her door. Pigs, rats and stray dogs would on feed on the mountain of waste that had become as high as a two-storey building. Diseases like typhoid and dengue were rampant. This was a grave threat to the Mithi River, which is about 20 feet away from the slum and a danger to residents of Kurla and Andheri-East, who receive water from the pipe, says Francin Pinto of Garbage Concern.
Three years ago, a womens self-help group from the slum approached the local corporator and asked for the area to be cleaned up. They flatly refused, saying it just wasnt possible, says Howad, general secretary of the Mahila Mandal.
Thats when Ashley Pereira, manager of the Janvi Charitable Trust, which runs child-care and computer centres in the slum, went door-to-door to educate the 100-odd families about garbage segregation. The slumdwellers were mobilised to clean the area. What emerged after the drive was a bare patch of land that could accommodate five more homes.
Everyone started claiming that land and wanted to expand their homes, says Haseena Shaikh, a resident of the slum. Pereira convinced the slumdwellers to create a garden where their children could play.
The Nirmala Niketan School of Social Work came up with a plan for solid waste management. Three plastic bins and two composting pits were set up. Pereira and Pinto held workshops on waste management. Pereira even trained and employed a slumdweller to do composting.
Today, the patch is covered with greenery and the area around the pipe is squeaky clean. Pereira says, Flies have been replaced by butterflies. There are also fewer health problems. The slumdwellers now religiously separate garbage at the source, sell some dry garbage to scrap dealers, collect the rest for the BMC to pick up and recycle wet garbage for compost for the garden.
The garden now even doubles up as a marriage venue. To book a hall is so costly. Now we hold weddings here only, says Shaikh, whose daughter was married in the garden six months ago.
Andheri-East slum
Andheri-East slum
* Garbage segregation
* Composting GROWING SOLUTIONS: (Top) The compost being put for plants. (Above) Activist Ashley Pereira inspects the segregation