Residents in the Werahera–Karadiyana area and the ‘Environmental Organisation for Protection of Weras Ganga Vicinity’ staged a peaceful protest against continuously depositing garbage at the Karadiyana garbage dump yesterday morning.
The convener of the Organisation, Mahesh Wickrema told the Sunday Observer, it is imperative that depositing of garbage in Karadiyana is stopped immediately before a similar episode to that of Meethotamulla is enacted here.
“We staged a peaceful protest and it was concluded successfully. There were around 3,000 personnel from the Police and the Special Task Force (STF) monitoring the area. We hope to meet our lawyers to seek what legal action that could be taken in this regard,” Wickrema said.
Two Court orders had been issued prior to the protest, stopping them from holding any protests. However, Mahesh explains that although two court orders were issued it allowed them to hold the protests in a peaceful manner.
“Court orders were issued from the Kesbewa as well as the Gangodawila Magistrate’s Courts. The order issued by the Gangodawila courts said that only peaceful protests will be allowed to carried out. We adhered to the order,” he said.
According to Wickrema, the residents are now worried the courts will further allow the authorities to dump garbage in Karadiyana beyond the 11 days allowed.
He also pointed out that residents have had to face an array of social issues due to the garbage dump as there is now a social stigma attached to those living in the area. ¨Our only request is that the government should respect our right to live a normal life” he said.
The Karadiyana dump which is situated on a marshy land was used by the Kesbewa local government authority to dump garbage in 2005. Subsequently garbage from other local government authorities too was dumped here. Currently at least 1,050 metric tons of garbage is dumped at Karadiyana daily.