KOCHI: Heaps of coconut husk, dirt and plastic waste-the Fort Kochi beach could be anything but neat. Though the DTPC spends Rs 30,000 a month for keeping the beach and its environs clean, the beach stretch remains dirty most of the time. As part of the clean destination campaign, the government had allotted Rs 1.64 crore for arranging cleaning works in various tourism destinations across Kerala for a period of 12 months from April 2010 to March 2011. According to locals, the ten green city Kudumbasree workers employed by the DTPC don’t clean the beach on a regular basis. “The cleaning happens only once in a while. Only certain portions are litter-free and you will find heaps of waste while walking. There are many food courts and small vendors and if the bins are full they encourage tourists to dump plastic waste on the road,” says a native. Though the Tourism Department is in charge of the cleaning, there is no proper and direct monitoring system there. “But no officer from the department has visited the place so far to monitor whether the cleaning is done the right way. Most of the tender coconut sellers leave the husk on the beach and it remains there for long,” he says. According to the tourism officials, the Cochin Heritage Conservation Society is the monitoring authority. “The society has two supervisors to monitor the quality of cleaning there. They submit a regular report, but there has been instances where warning letters and circulars were issued as the work was not carried out properly,” says a tourism official. Other than Utsavam and World Tourism Day celebrations, the Tourism Department is not involved in any major tourism promotion programmes in Fort Kochi. Most of the tourism-related activities are taken care of by the Cochin Heritage Conservation Society. There is a total of 21 staff (DTPC and society) who are engaged in cleaning works. There are complaints regarding this and one reason for this is the fact that the corporation is not taking away the waste regularly. Though the staff are cleaning from Vasco da Gama square to the Dutch Cemetery, the waste they collect is dumped near the square as there is no other way to dispose of the waste. There is no routine removal, may be they will do by the time of carnival,” says an official of the Cochin Heritage Conservation Society.
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