New Delhi [India]: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal inspected the Bhalswa Sanitary Landfill and said that the government aims to remove the waste at the site by March next year.
The Chief Minister was accompanied by Delhi Government’s Urban Development Minister Saurabh Bhardwaj, MCD’s Mayor Shelly Oberoi, Deputy Mayor Aaley Mohammad Iqbal and senior officers of concerned departments. Upon his arrival at the site, Kejriwal reviewed the process of Bio-Mining & Bio-Remediation of legacy waste at the landfill. He took note of the data regarding the functioning of the landfill and the timelines of garbage processing operations.
Notably, the Bhalswa Sanitary Landfill is a 28 year old site, spread across 70 acres. The landfill is one of the three infamous garbage mountains of Delhi.
Speaking to media persons after the inspection, CM Kejriwal said, “It was after the 2019 order of the NGT that work began to remove waste from this landfill site. At that time there was around 80 lakh metric tons of waste. From 2019 until now, around 30 lakh metric tons of waste has been removed from this site and at present it holds around 50 lakh metric tons of waste.”
“Over the last two and a half years or so, 30 lakh metric tons of waste has been removed from here, but the MCD now under the Aam Aadmi Party will work even faster and we are targeting to remove another 30 lakh metric ton of waste by December this year. The final target of the state government is to remove the entire 50 lakh metric ton of waste that is remaining at the site by March of next year,” he added.
He said that the wastes are being removed at a faster pace than the initial target.
“The initial target was to remove 6500 metric tonnes of waste per day, but yesterday 9000 MT was removed. By the end of this month, 12000 MT of waste will be removed every day. With the speed at which the work was going on here at Bhalswa landfill site, the area would be cleared of all the garbage by March 2024,” he said.
Replying to a media query on waste segregation, the Delhi CM highlighted that segregation of waste is important and urged the residents to try and segregate waste at the source.