Submit plan to raze 3 garbage mountains at Ghazipur, Bhalaswa and Okhla: L-G to officials
The Lt Governor of Delhi, VK Saxena, visited the sanitary landfill site at Ghazipur and issued categorical instructions to officers to submit a plan of action within the next three days for complete razing of all three garbage mountains situated at Ghazipur, Bhalaswa and Okhla.
He also instructed that a dedicated team of officers be constituted to draw out the plan of action mentioning a fixed date of completion.
He suggested adopting the reverse engineering model so as to ensure that the deadlines are met and goals achieved.
The action plan to be submitted by MCD will be monitored on a regular basis by the Lt Governor himself and if required, he would visit the site to see actual progress at regular intervals.
A special cell will also be put in place in the LG Secretariat to monitor the work on a weekly basis. The Lt. Governor accompanied by the Chief Secretary, Special Officer, MCD, Commissioner, MCD, Chief Conservator of Forest and other senior officials, went right up to the top of the garbage mound and spent more than two hours at the site in scorching heat inspecting various activities and the surroundings so as to get a first hand feel of the intensity and magnitude of the problem at hand. He observed that the recycling activities being undertaken on the mounds was generating substantial dust that was adding to the haze and pollution in the adjoining areas and asked officers to address this by using recycled water from the nearby STP for sprinkling and settling the dust.
Spread over 70 acres, the Ghazipur landfill site has legacy waste amounting to 140 lakh metric tonnes and the East Delhi areas that it caters generates 2,600 metric tonnes of waste on a daily basis.
Similarly, the sites at Bhalaswa in North Delhi and Okhla in South Delhi contain legacy waste mounds amounting to 80 and 50 lakh metric tonnes respectively. The solid waste at these sites are of three categories – Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF), Construction & Demolition (C&D) and Inert Waste. While the RDF waste is being used to generate power from ‘Waste-to-Energy’ Plants set up for this purpose, a small quantity of inert waste is being taken by NHAI for its road construction activities, the processed C&D waste can be used for construction and filling activities.
Reviewing the ongoing work of bio-remediation at the site that also involves segregation of waste and off take of recycled garbage, the Lt. Governor directed that the Ghazipur ‘Waste-to-Energy’ Plant be operationalised at the earliest so that the amount of fresh waste being added to the site is reduced.
To address the issue of inert waste material, he directed officials to explore the possibility of this being used by other States as is being done by the NHAI. Being informed that off take of recycled C&D waste was an issue of concern, Saxena suggested that the possibility of making it available to the general people, builders and construction firms in NCR region be explored. This he said, apart from addressing the issue of off take will also result in revenue generation.
He emphasised upon a campaign to involve the people of Delhi, NGOs, Ragpickers and other civil society groups in the efforts to shape the skyline and landscape of Delhi so as to make the city free of mountains of garbage at various locations in the National Capital. The Lt Governor also desired that experts be consulted so that innovative technologies can be put to use for the completion of the process.
Recalling the Prime Minister’s exhortation of wiping out these garbage mounds on the occasion of the launch of Swachh Bharat 2.0 on Gandhi Jayanti last year, the Lt Governor called upon the entire government machinery in Delhi to be geared up in achieving this goal.
Underlining that the lapses therein will be taken extremely seriously and responsibility thereof will be fixed, Saxena instructed officials of MCD to regularly put out in public domain the reduction in height of the mounds achieved as a result of their efforts at all the three sites in Ghazipur, Bhalaswa and Okhla.
