Garbage mess: City Mayor holds all-councillor meet

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, July 17

The Chandigarh Municipal Corporation will direct Jaypee Group to utilise the full capacity of the plant and upgrade the machinery so that the entire city waste may be processed. The firm will also be told to properly manage the compost plant installed by it.

The decision was taken at a meeting of councillors convened by Mayor Davesh Moudgil on Tuesday to discuss the issue of solid waste management and garbage processing plant. During the meeting, the councillors raised the issue of heaps of garbage lying inside the processing plant causing inconvenience to residents of the nearby areas.

Additional Commissioner Saurabh Mishra told the councillors that the plant was accepting the entire waste for the past 15 to 20 days. But due to a problem in the secondary shredder, it was not able to process the entire garbage. As a result, garbage has accumulated inside the plant. A report of RDF production on a daily basis has been sought from Jaypee Group.

The Mayor said the plant was not processing the entire waste and lots of garbage is being dumped at the dumping ground. So, the condition of areas near the dumping ground is worsening.

The councillors have decided to seek the report of the monitoring committee constituted by the National Green Tribunal regarding technical and scientific facts and figures should be obtained to pursue the case further with the NGT. Possibilities should be explored to install an additional plant for processing and disposal of half of the city garbage in case the existing plant does not improve its performance. Options should be explored to acquire 35 acres near the existing landfill site opposite Patiala Ki Rao for an additional dumping site. It was also decided to explore the possibilities to process the city waste at Samgauli plant near Dera Bassi.

Besides councillors, others who attended the meeting included Jaypee officials, Dr Saurabh Mishra, Additional Commissioner; Vinod Aggarwal, Deputy Mayor; Manoj Bansal, Chief Engineer; NP Sharma and Sanjay Arora, Superintending Engineers, B&R, and Public Health; and Dr Pardeep Vasesi, Medical Officer of Health.