MUMBAI, August 13: The civic administration may be busy with its campaign to spit and polish up Mumbai for the `Zero Garbage Day' on August 15, but one corner of the city has already been made garbage free: the Joseph-Patelwadi slums on Old Yari road, Andheri. The main road here has a rush of canna leaves and flowers; children don't dirty the roads but use clay pots made specially for them; and the identity of the area as `stink-pot' has been overhauled completely.

And all this has been done without taxing the city's already overburdened sanitation system and without using bulky compactors and dust-bins. Instead, deep burrowing earthworms in huge bins that cover storm water drains are being used here. These bins serve a dual purpose: the drains get covered and the space is well utilised.

The brain behind the project is ``earthworm man'' Shantu Shenai of the Green Cross Society, whose motto is ``Process garbage in your front yard, don't leave it in the compound.''

Earlier, the 35-year-old wadi with 600 families had to wait for days to see its garbage cleared. Today, the society has employed attendants to collect garbage twice a day from every house. This is then treated with lime, rock dust and vermiculture in the 15 bins on the road. ``The road is so clean that people who earlier used to hold their noses while passing by now can eat there,'' says vegetable vendor Baban Patharane.

V V Ajwalkar, chairperson of the Joseph-Patelwadi committee, felt that the BMC was unable to handle the garbage generated by the 400 houses. He recounted that they used to fight with the BMC to get their garbage collected.

According to Shantu, the project was the result of the state government's efforts at encouraging individual ventures in handling the city's sanitation. Efforts which the United Nations InternationalChildren's Educational Fund (UNICEF) was only too keen to support. ``We intend to make it entirely self-sufficient so that the locals can take over from us,'' he adds.

Nobody is complaining. Least of all the children. ``Adults in the slum never encouraged children to use the toilets simply because they invariably ended up dirtying them. They were asked to use the road,'' says Fatima Vengurlekar, a society trustee. The pots are kept close to one another, with flower pots and canna leaves creating a screen giving the kids just the privacy they seek. Afterwards, attendants at the site teach them to spread rock dust and vermiculture in the pots.

Yet, locals find it difficult to accept that some day in the future, they might have to pay for these services. ``We did discuss the issue in our mahila mandal meetings,'' says Ajwalkar, ``but nobody was willing to pay''. Shantu is not worried. He has just begun in February, and has been given three years for the project. ``What is important is that people get a chance to see the work for themselves,'' he asserts.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.