Despite NGT & PPCB penalty, legacy waste not yet cleared from Bhagtanwala dump

Though the National Green Tribunal (NGT) imposed a penalty of Rs 1,036 crore on the state for legacy waste, 20 lakh metric tonnes of waste is still lying at Bhagtanwala dump. The MC has already paid a heavy amount to the Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) in the form of penalties but has not implemented the guidelines of the green tribunal. As the municipal authorities failed to implement source-level segregation in the city, heaps of garbage has been increasing with regularity instead of being removed. The efforts made for the removal of legacy waste also proved to be futile as governments only sign MoU with private firms and do not keep a check on their function.

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In the name of legacy waste removal, the SAD-BJP government hired a firm, SL Infra, in 2016. The firm had promised to process the legacy garbage within two years but failed to start the process. In 2018, the Congress government hired another solid waste management firm, Averda, for the same task but work on bio-remediation could not start. The AAP government and MC officials now want to terminate the services of Averda and hire a new firm for the same task.

The activists fighting against the dump as well as environmentalists claimed that changing companies will not provide any solution but only provide ‘commission’ to politicians and officials.