Hanamkonda: Rampur landfill sparks health crisis, residents plan indefinite stir after Sankrathi

Residents of Rampur and surrounding villages in Hanamkonda are preparing to intensify protests against the Greater Warangal Municipal Corporation’s failure to relocate the Rampur dumping yard. The 31-acre landfill has accumulated over three lakh tonnes of waste, causing severe air, water, and soil pollution. Despite promises, the GWMC’s bio-mining plant has failed to deliver results.

Hanamkonda: As the Greater Warangal Municipal Corporation (GWMC) authorities failed to address the long-standing problem of pollution caused by a dumping yard at Rampur near Kazipet the locals are intending to intensify their protests.

With hundreds of tons of waste disposed daily at the 31-acre landfill named Kakatiya Solid Waste Management Park around three lakh tonnes of legacy waste have been accumulated. Lack of a proper waste disposal system led to burning of garbage, causing severe air, water and soil pollution in the villages around the park in the 46th municipal ward.

Even as the residents have been staging protests for over a decade demanding to relocate the dumping yard, disposing of large volumes of municipal and biomedical waste continues at the site posing a great health risk to the locals.

The residents of Rampur, Madikonda, Elkurthi, Narsingraopally, Ayodhyapuram, Indiramma Colony, Kummariguda and Diesel Colony have formed ‘Dumping Yard Nirmulana Samithi’ under the leadership of 64th division corporator Avala Radhika Reddy.

Speaking to Telangana Today, the samithi leader Gaddam Mahender said that after their protests the officials promised to relocate the dumping yard, but in vain. The GWMC’s bio-mining plant set up to process around 900 metric tons of legacy waste daily with a deadline of January 2024 has failed to yield results.

The residents are suffering from respiratory and skin diseases due to toxic smoke emanating from burning garbage as well as ground water pollution. The dumping site is affecting the health of around two lakh people in the villages, informed Radhika Reddy.

Mahender revealed that if the officials fail to address the problem forthwith the samithi would launch an indefinite protest after Sankranthi festival. If required an indefinite hunger strike would also be taken up, he warned.

A team of researchers of Department of Environmental Science, Osmania University in Hyderabad conducted a study by collecting groundwater samples from open wells and borewells of samples during February 2017- July 2017.

It was found that the majority of the samples of ground water physicochemical parameters were above the prescribed limits of water quality standards prescribed by WHO (2011) and BIS 10500:2012 standards and it is unfit for drinking purposes.