SE among top Panchkula civic body officials indicted for lapses

Bhartesh Singh Thakur

Tribune News Service

Panchkula, April 18

An inquiry by the Urban Local Bodies Department (ULBD), Haryana, into the treatment of legacy waste at the dumping ground in Sector 23, Panchkula, has indicted officials of the Municipal Corporation (MC) for lapses.

Anomalies

• The committee has noted that Superintending Engineer Vijay Goyal did not appear before it during the inspection of the site “which was a serious matter” and showed “lack of seriousness” of the issue.
• It added that a payment of Rs4.94 crore was made to the private agency, but they were not in a position to evaluate the quantum of the legacy waste processed by the agency because contours were not drawn and third party evaluation was not carried out.

A committee comprising Additional Director (Administration) YS Gupta, Chief Town Planner KK Varshney, Chief Engineer Ashok Rathee and Executive Engineer Ranbir Singh looked into whether the work of bioremediation of legacy waste was executed as per the contract and instructions issued by the ULBD. It has indicted Superintending Engineer (SE) Vijay Goyal, who is the technical head of the MC.

Executive Engineer Ankit Lohan, Executive Engineer Sanjeev Gupta, Assistant Engineer Ravinder Singh, and Municipal Engineer Raj Kumar Sharma have also been named in the report, along with Junior Engineers Parveen Malik and Lokinder. All these officials were assigned the work of overseeing the bioremediation work.

Goyal said: “As the SE, I have not been involved in the day-to-day monitoring of the treatment of the legacy waste. It is looked over by officers of the level of Executive Engineer and below.”

Haryana Assembly Speaker Gian Chand Gupta, who represents the Panchkula constituency, said: “I had complained to the Chief Minister on lapses in the treatment of the legacy waste and after that, an inquiry was marked to the Director, ULBD. Serious lapses have been pointed out.”

Director, ULBD, Ashok Kumar Meena said they would send the report to the government for action on Monday. The committee visited the dumping site on March 6.

Ind Sanitation Solution Pvt Limited was allotted the work of bioremediation of waste at Rs947 per MT through the tender process. The agency started the work on September 19, 2020.

The committee has noted that Superintending Engineer Vijay Goyal did not appear before it during the inspection of the site “which was a serious matter” and showed “lack of seriousness” of the issue.

It added that a payment of Rs4.94 crore was made to the private agency, but they were not in a position to evaluate the quantum of the legacy waste processed by the agency because contours were not drawn and third party evaluation was not carried out.

The MC also did not produce documents regarding the quality of groundwater, work zone air quality, and ambient air quality regularly. Regarding “failures” of the MC, the committee noted that it was required to earmark a land parcel at the Sector 23 dumpsite or any other location for dumping and segregation of the fresh waste so that legacy waste could be handled. It was observed that fresh waste was still being dumped there.

However, a new site had been identified.

It pointed out that the local body failed to obtain all mandatory clearances concerning the project. It added that “mechanism to receive any domestic hazardous waste or biomedical waste from the agency and their disposal as per the Bio-Medical Waste Management Rules, 2016, has not yet been devised.” It also commented that the MC failed to devise an effective process for monitoring the project, roles, and responsibilities of officers, forms, registers, and record to be kept in the manner.

On “failures” of the agency, the committee said it did not deposit the performance security and also the reclamation and remediation plan for the first quarter. The plan would have had details on the schedule for obtaining regulatory approvals, manpower and equipment details, and implementation schedule for setting up of remediation facility. Though a weight bridge was installed, its feed was not made online due to which it was not stored in any server. The geotechnical survey of the site was not carried out, added the committee. Also, CCTV cameras were installed in February 2021, whereas these were supposed to be installed before the commencement of the processing of the legacy waste, and no standard procedure was adopted to keep backup of the cameras.

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