Chandigarh: Third garbage mound at Dadumajra dump raises a stink
Dadumajra residents flag health risks amid delays to clear waste
Heaps of garbage that comprise the third mound at Dadumajra counter the Municipal Corporation’s (MC) claims. As per the city body, work to clear the site will be completed in the next 10 days, even as the dump of garbage continues to raise a stink.
Notably, work to clear waste from the two major mounds of garbage at the Dadumajra dump has missed multiple deadlines. Influx of fresh waste continued at the site in the meantime, resulting in the third mount coming up.
Ramesh Kumar, a local trader, said nothing has changed in the past 20 years. “We have been living in the hell for years. There are health risks and the stink and flies make it difficult to live here but we have little choice,” he added.
Dayal Krishan, a resident of the area and the president of the Dumping Ground Joint Action Committee, said the huge mounts of waste expose the civic body’s tall claims.
The pace at which the work to remove the garbage is underway makes it unlikely that the 10-day deadline would be met, he noted, lamenting the past instances of targets being missed.
The MC’s latest efforts to clear the dump had an initial deadline of May 31, 2025, but it was shifted to July 31, 2025. In September that year, civic body in the reply of the notice of the Chandigarh Pollution Control Committee (CPCC) said the remaining quantity of 60,000 MT will be remediated by November 30, 2025.
Civic body officers claimed that two dumps had been fully cleared from the site. The first, which comprised 5 lakh metric tonne (MT) legacy waste, was cleared in 39 months. The second, comprising 8 lakh MT waste, was cleared in 26 months.
The MC had also imposed penalties on firms for the slow pace of processing legacy waste at Dadumajra, but the goal to clear the third dump is yet to be achieved.
