It's now three days of hard work to clean show venue

 The crowds left the Yelahanka airbase carrying with them impressions of steel birds that roared in the sky, but 200 housekeeping staff will work for next three days to clear tonnes of garbage they left behind.

“It will be 12.30 in the middle of night when we will clear the runway area as the Air Force needs it for immediate operations. But the garbage in the exhibition area and the halls require two or three more days of work,” said Satish Kumar who was supervising 200 maintenance workers.

Abhishek Gupta, director of Reddonatura, which is converting the food waste into manure during the Aero India, said that the amount of food waste has come down from 10 tonnes during the last air show to 7.5 tonnes in 2017. “But dry waste has remained almost the same at 30 tonnes, and nearly two tonnes of it is plastic,” he said, adding that his team will make sure that all kinds of garbage including plastic, is recycled.

Many visitors to whom DH spoke, expressed satisfaction with the cleanliness of the whole environment in the airbase. The maintenance staff, however, said that the last two days of the show that were open for public gave them more work. Venkatesh T, who was hired for cleaning at Rs 400 a day, said he will have two more busy days of work.  “There was work for the three days, but today was the busiest,” he said.

More than 2.5 lakh people visited the airbase on Saturday and the maintenance staff were not happy with all of them. “There are dustbins everywhere in the arena. But people throw garbage on roads we have just cleaned. Of course, we will clean as many times as it requires. But that doesn’t mean everyone can spoil a neat place,” said Mutyalamma, who had come from Bettahalasur who worked for Rs 300 per day.

Satish said the organisers and his company together conducted awareness among visitors against throwing garbage in public areas. “Programmes like Swachh Bharat will be of no use if people do not correct themselves,” he said.