Rain-soaked Deepavali firecracker waste poses challenge to Corporation workers in Erode

ERODE Rain-soaked firecracker debris sticking to road surfaces has made clearance difficult for Corporation conservancy workers in Erode following Deepavali celebrations on Sunday (November 8, 2026), forcing them to scrape and collect the waste manually. According to the 2011 Census, Erode city has a population of 4.98 lakh spread across 109.52 sq. km.

It has 60 wards in four zones, with 1,69,912 residential properties and 27,386 commercial establishments. More than 1,200 conservancy workers are engaged in solid waste management across the city every day. Discarded cracker boxes, cardboard, plastic wrappers, paper remnants and empty sweet packets were littered roads in several wards on Monday (November 9).

Waste was also dumped in open drains and at road corners, while heaps of discarded material were burnt in some places. Unlike household waste collected door-to-door, cracker debris is scattered across streets and has to be swept, gathered and loaded into vehicles, adding to the workers’ routine workload of waste collection and segregation.