Garbage dump fire spreads toxic fumes, UE residents write to MC Commissioner

Tribune News Service

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Jalandhar, February 16

Members of the AGAPP, Jalandhar, residents of Urban Estate, Phase 1, have written to the Municipal Commissioner, Jalandhar, flagging concerns over the continued burning of garbage dumps and waste sites in the area.

Residents of Urban Estate Phase 1, Jalandhar, whose houses are near the railway line between the two phases of Urban Estate, said they are facing grave health risks due to toxic fumes from burning garbage mounds.

In their letter to the MC Commissioner, the complainants Dr Navneet Bhullar and Dr Pallavi Khanna, president, AGAPP, said certain houses across the railway line had been dumping their household waste by the side of the railway track on Phase 1 for several months and these were often set on fire by unknown people, emitting carcinogenic fumes from the plastic wastes.

Residents complained that this week on two days, back to back, they had to smell acrid fumes for hours while sitting inside rooms.

A resident stated, “I have been taking buckets of water for the last several months to extinguish the smaller fires, but it's more than enough. Two days ago, in the morning, even after dousing two spots with buckets, the fumes of burning plastic did not cease.”

Residents also said they had called the area councillor and he immediately asked the MC trucks to come and pick the garbage heaps. However, they could not touch all garbage heaps as the fire went on for hours after they arrived. Residents said neither punitive action had so far been taken to punish the persons setting these heaps on fire, nor was anything done to prevent the area from becoming a mini-landfill.

Attaching geotagged photos of the dumps with their complaint, they also questioned inaction on illegal manufacture, distribution and use of single use plastic.

They demanded immediate action to stop garbage dumps and punish the guilty.

They also stated that as per a National Green Tribunal judgment (November 2016), the open burning of garbage had been declared illegal.