What a waste! Agency won't clear all garbage

Sandeep Rana

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 11

Clearing the Dadu Majra dumping ground of waste by the end of 2021 seems nothing but an illusion.

It has been found that the work of biomining the waste, which was allotted to a private firm for a whopping Rs33 crore, was only for about half of the total garbage lying at the ground. The company was assigned the task to biomine 5 lakh metric tonnes of waste. About 4.50 lakh tonnes of waste will still be left at the ground. The garbage has been generated since 2005. However, the authorities had created an impression that the entire waste would be lifted from the ground.

KK Yadav, MC Commissioner-cum-CEO of Smart City Limited, said: “As many as 4.50 lakh metric tonnes of garbage generated after 2005 will still be left at the dumping ground. The problem has been persisting due to Jaypee Associates, which failed to process the waste regularly all these years.”

He said 75,000 metric tonnes of waste had been biomined so far. The work was slowed down due to Covid and restarted in June. “Another woe is the waste processing plant that was taken over by the MC last year. It is only processing about 70 metric tonnes of waste daily, while the city generates about 450 metric tonnes of garbage each day. The unprocessed waste is also dumped at the ground, which emanates foul smell,” he said.

Dyal Krishan, president, Dumping Ground Joint Action Committee, said: “At the time of the inauguration of the project, it was claimed that the mountain of waste will be cleared from the dumping ground. However, it was a mere eyewash. You can check any newspaper from the inauguration day, it was claimed that the whole ground will be cleared.”

“Also, there is no check on the biomining being done. Who is checking which waste is being thrown here and which waste is being biomined?” he added.

On December 20, 2019, UT Administrator VP Singh Badnore, in the presence of MP Kirron Kher and councillors, inaugurated the “Mining of Legacy Waste and Recovery of Land” project with much fanfare under the Smart City mission at the dumping ground here.