Waste management project in Jalandhar a non-starter

Deepkamal Kaur

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Jalandhar, April 22

Even as a plan to implement Municipal Solid Waste Management Project for the city had been initiated way back in 2014, there has hardly been any headway even after the passage of over eight years.

Initially it was planned that the waste from not just Jalandhar city but also 20 urban local bodies falling in its periphery would land up at 75-acre site in Jamsher village, where it would be used to generate energy, but the project could not take off. There were reports that the power plant could generate some gases that could cause health issues. Also the residents of the area were averse to getting such a huge volume of waste loaded in several tippers landing up in their village daily.

Ever since, it was planned that waste management would be done in smaller clusters and about 55 compost pits would be set up across the city so that the kitchen waste could be handled locally and be converted to manure. But even this project has so far not been successful as the residents have opposed to any waste pits coming up in their mohallas. Even the unions of safai karamcharis have not been forthcoming with the idea of waste segregation owing to their own vested interests, the MC officials have alleged. While all developed urban cities leading in Swachhta Survekshan have been managing their waste well by ensuring segregation of wet and dry waste from every home, collecting them in separate containers of the Municipal Corporation and disposing them off as manure or scrap, nothing of the sort has happened in Jalandhar so far. The scheme to distribute blue and green bins had been initiated in some mohallas as a pilot project during the SAD-BJP government but the system could not sustain even for a month as the safai karamcharis had gone on strike against the move to hire private staff for the purpose.

Since the scheme could not pick up, everything including recyclable stuff and compostable kitchen waste continues to be dumped in the MC’s landfill site at Wariana.

Says Congress councillor Jasleen Sethi, “Waste management scheme is a total failure in Jalandhar. Neither the authorities nor the employees have shown any interest to execute it. Even if I segregate my kitchen waste and dry waste from my home and hand it over separately to the rag picker, he will pour both bins in the same compartment of his cart, making all effort go waste.”

Congress councillor Neerja Jain said, “There was a proposal to set up a compost pit in my ward way back in 2018. By chance, I was abroad those days. When I came back, I was told that the mohalla people had opposed the plan and nothing has happened ever since”.

Karnesh Sharma, MC chief, said, “We are working to get bio-mining project started in Wariana dumping site. The civil work which is on will get completed in 1.5 months. The processing will begin in the next 2.5 months and two years it should complete and we will be able to reclaim 22 acres land there. For fresh waste management, I had recently attended a Smart City conference at Surat. I had met some people who had come up with start-up, low cost proposals for fresh waste management. I expect a team to visit Jalandhar in the next 15 days and give a demonstration of their decentralised model of waste management”.

Sharma added: “We are also coming up with a new project of Kala Sanghian drain beautification. The DPR of the project will be ready in the next 10-15 days. We intend to beautify the site by lining the drain, doing plantation along its 13 km length, putting up inter-locking tiles and night lamps and creating a bio-diversity park there.”